CREATING ART THE AMATEUR WAY

This was my first attempt at negative painting and of a white flower. I didn't find the negative painting as easy as some art tutorials make it seem but I had used non-staining watercolour paints, and transparents where I could, so I was able to alter where I felt best. Although not perfect, I feel it isn't too bad for a first attempt. The reference photo was one of mine which I took some years ago in my garden. I used Daniel Smith watercolour paints.  Negative painting of white flowers Jasmine Officinale

I am definitely out of my comfort zone with pen and wash, I don't know why. Anyway, this is my second attempt at one which took a few hours and much less time than I usually spend on a painting. Photos of this picturesque scene abound on the world wide web and I think I got the reference photo copyright free off Pixabay.  Runwick Bay Village, Yorkshire I painted it in my Strathmore watercolour journal using Schmincke Horadam paint and a Faber Castell Ecco Pigment pen 0.3. I placed it alongside my very first pen and wash of Skipton Church. 

As I work on my Strathmore watercolour journal I want the adjoining pages to relate to one another. I did one painting of primitive pottery a few days ago and this is another so that the painting now stretches across two whole pages. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out. Although the watercolour paper in the journal is not the easiest to work with (it is far from robust), granulating paints are really easy to lift off which helped me with my usual method of putting paint on and taking it off and messing about and so on until I'm relatively happy with the result. It is very rare that I am entirely pleased. Watercolour painting of primitive pottery And the end result. I tied myself in knots over the border of the painting and settled for a mishmash of Schmincke Horadam Mars Black with a skim of Daniel Smith Prima metallic paint.  When I finished the painting, or thought I had, I felt that there was this big blank space right in the top middle so I stuck an impression of ...

I had fun with this, nearly.  I decided to paint the primitive-looking pottery using Schmincke Horadam supergranulating paints and they worked well but I couldn't quite achieve a satisfying result. In my efforts to do so, I managed to damage the surface of the Strathmore watercolour journal, which isn't difficult to do. Also, again, masking tape caused the surface of the paper to tear. Sigh.  I tried using various Daniel Smith metallics on the pottery but it look wrong so the only place that has it is the bottom pot.  I wanted to achi eve an interesting background but with a lot of space and I faffed around with that. I was happy with my choice of Daniel Smith 'Buff Titanium' which is granulating, but I wanted there to be a bit more to it.  Watercolour 'primitive' pottery I had bought a Tim Holtz 'spider-web' stencil and tried that but despite using a dryish brush to dab on the chosen watercolour (not very watery), the effect was pathetic and the stencil...

I had such a problem painting this alpine strawberry. It seemed like a good idea at the time but I could not quite get it to a point where I was very happy and left it at happy enough. It's in the Strathmore 400 series journal on the page opposite the raspberries and vanilla ice cream painting (which was a whole lot better). It's time to move on.  Alpine strawberry in watercolour I disliked the original background so, in desperation, went into my garden and picked an alpine strawberry leaf and used it to create imprints on the background simply by painting the leaf and pressing it to the surface of the paper. I quite like the result and this was a first for me. I've got a garden full of potential. Who knew? I used Daniel Smith paints, mostly transparent.  If you've never eaten Alpine strawberries, they are delicious. They have a slightly perfumed taste to them, are small and tend to be rounder. They self seed quite readily so I have the small plants dotted about in my g...

I decided to have a go at my first self-portrait. I haven't drawn anyone's portrait before and so I thought I would use the Loomis method. I even bought Andrew Loomis's book 'Drawing the Head and Hands' but even then I couldn't quite get to grasps where the circle goes for more complicated perspectives. So, determined not to be put off drawing, I took the easy route and traced a forward-looking photo of myself which I changed to black and white, and then focused on shading. This is it. Onward and upward. The Hahnemuhle Nostalgie 90lb paper is smooth, an off-white colour described as natural white, and the pencil glided over it so smoothly. At no point did I draw with the point of the pencil but shaded with the side of the lead, only skating over the paper surface, holding the pencil almost by its end. To erase pencils marks, I used a Faber-Castell dust-free eraser and also a Tombow Mono eraser with a round tip. I have to admit that although I was tempted to use ...

I recently bought a new watercolour journal by SM.LT called FB-32(300) and I am pleased to say that it is excellent. It's 100% cotton, 140lb (300gsm) and seems like a cross between HP and CP. It takes a deluge of water and under that weight of water it bulged slightly (even Arches 400lb CP will bulge under so much water) rather than buckle—and then dried flat. The hard covers of the journal are advertised as Real Stone, and they certainly looks like real stone (perhaps they are a composite).  In the journal I painted an autumn leaf from a photo taken of the Hosta 'Sagai' plant. I couldn't believe how beautiful the leaves were even in age.  It is the first time I have painted water-droplets and it was hard to do, particularly as even when wearing glasses under a bright 'Daylight' lamp my eyes aren't quite up to the job of such fine detail. I had to limit it to just a few but I think it turned out okay.  Watercolour painting of a Hosta Sagai leaf The leaf is p...