Connor - coloured pencil portrait wip

I thought that I would load the most recent update of Connor's portrait. I haven't had a chance to do anything on this for a few days now but hope one or two more decent sessions will finish it.

I have been working on 3 more resin pieces but stuffed up one completely in my experimenting of dropping acrylic paint into the wet resin. The effect is great except for the wrong colour went over the wrong area when the resin smoothed out and when I tried to fix it I made it worse. So that one is heading for the bin. Just as well it was a small one as I was using that to experiment on before I resin the large one.

Charcoal and white chalk portrait and oil seascape

I realises today that I hadn't added these to this blog. This top one is called "Twilight Dreaming" and is oil on canvas 600 x 300 x 40mm painted around the sides.

And this is a portrait of my step-son drawn from a photo I took last year that I loved. It actually looks heaps better in real life as the photo didn't capture some of the more subtle tone changes you see in real life. This is on A3 Mi-Teints and I used compressed charcoal and white conte chalk.

Visual Diary ideas

I thought that I would post one of the pages in my visual diary to show the ideas I am coming up with in regards to these abstracted landscapes and seascapes. I have three that I am nearly finished with that I just need to add the embedded objects and resin but here are some other ideas I have been playing with.

I find watercolour pencils a great way to play around with colour ideas as these are all about colour and jewel-like colours with texture and glossiness.

I have been thinking about a place I have been at a certain time and then reducing that down to the colours that I feel when I think about it and how that could translate.

I'm really enjoying these and it is a nice break from oils (which I perhaps use a bit more seriously). For some reason I feel that I can play more with acrylics and I wouldn't know why. It could be that acrylics are easy to paint over and start again if it doesn't work and in fact most of these canvases that I am using are pre-used acrylic paintings that I never finished or was unhappy with that I have covered and textured and it feels great to re-use them.

I am making good progress with the coloured pencil portrait of my Labrador and am over half way through. It is a long long process with coloured pencils but I actually find it quite meditative to do that detailed work that takes hours and hours and hours. I normally don't watch TV but we are watching LOST on DVD at the moment so this keeps me busy while watching as I find it hard to sit and watch without something to do other than watching the TV.

The little triptych and start of portrait

Here is the completed triptych once again inspired by the sea. The canvases (6"x6") were collaged with textured papers and then gesso'd and then glazed with acrylic paint and glazing medium, interference gel and acrylic ink. I used gold leaf in these as well.

Unfortunately you get the glare of the resin in these photos but they are the best I can get to show the textures.

I am really really enjoying these and have another 3 on the go. I will also post a picture of the concepts I am coming up with in my sketchbook. I am really excited about doing a series of these as I am having so much fun with them and it is such a nice break from the more detailed work I do with oil.

And here is the start of a coloured pencil portrait I have started of my lovely black lab. These take forever and this is almost life size so it may be a few weeks to complete it. This is on Stonehenge paper and I am using a mixture of pencils to do it, so Prismacolor, Lyra, Derwent Coloursoft and Caran D'Arch. The last portrait I did of Connor was on Art Spectrum Colourfix paper which eats pencils because of the sanded surface. I think it is marginally quicker on Stonehenge and I am pretty pleased with the amount of layering it is letting me do. I subscribe to a number of blogs from Coloured Pencil Artists in the UK and USA and Stonehenge does seem to be a recommended support for this type of work.

Better photo of the resin piece

Here are some marginally better photos of the resin piece I did the other day. I am thinking of a series of resined landscapes and seascapes so I think I may write that up as one of my briefs.

By the way the piece is 500 x 300 x 40mm.

Some photos from the Shave an Artist and Life Exhibition

On Tuesday night we had the opening night of the LIFE exhibition at the Bruce Mason Centre which also involved Shave an Artist and an art auction to raise money for the Leukemia and Blood Foundation. My painting 'Escape' is in that exhibition for the next month and it was the NZ Art Guild that put on this event.

I am a moderator with the art guild and help out with the exhibitions and collaborative projects etc so for this one, I helped on with the hanging of the exhibition on Monday, and was an auction spotter on the night itself.

Over $20,000 was raised between the 13 people getting their heaps shaved and the 13 artworks auctioned off so it was a fantastic night.

These are just a few of my favourite photos from the night. Unfortunately I had to grab my camera in breaks between auctions so I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked. But what a fantastic cause to be involved with and this is one of the reasons why I get so much out of my work with the NZ Art Guild, when I can be involved with such fantastic events that help worthy causes.

Playing with resin and texture and glazing

I have had a lot of fun with these pieces which are mixed media with resin. Unfortunately none of the photos quite do it justice and I have found again that with resin, it is very hard to get a decent photo to show the effect. I will try again once the resin is fully set to see if I can get a final photo.

Here is a little bit of the detail. Basically I have textured all these canvases and then did layers and layers of glazing (also hasn't come out clear in the photo) with some interference gold gel mixed through the glazes too. I have used both acrylics and acrylic inks. I then broke up gold leaf and rubbed that in and did the first layering of resin. After that was dry I sprinkled more gold leaf on top and have done another layer so you can see the gold suspended in the resin when you see it in real life.

It was fun to use resin again and have a break from oil painting and get some texture in as well. I used a variety of modelling pastes and other textures for the big one and the small ones have had tissue paper and other textured paper as the basis. I have textured up a couple more canvases so I will keep on playing with this.

This is an abstracted seascape. I wanted to try and reduce reduce reduce and get down to the colours and the feel when the sky and sea are so reflected in each other that it is an expanse of turquoise. The gold represents the preciousness of our oceans and the living beings within which are currently at risk with human behaviour the way it is.

I am also really keen to explore thin layers of resin with things embedded in different layers so I am going to think a bit about how I can achieve that and how it would work.

All in all it was so much fun to break out the acrylics again and take advantage of the quick drying. Especially with this heat at the moment, I just sat the canvases outside between glazes and they dried incredibly quickly. It has been a while since I have done anything with resin and texture and I think it is a good break from the more detailed work I do in oils and is quite refreshing.