Portrait Practice

Hello All!

Today I thought I would share some of the portraits I have been working on. I decided after watching 'the big painting challenge' on the BBC that it was about time I practiced painting 'well known' faces. I have never had a problem painting people I don't know very well, but the more I know the person the harder I find it to capture them. Family members are difficult but the hardest by far is a self portrait.

Well practice makes perfect and so practice is what I'm doing!

I started with my mum. I did a sketch of her first:

That went well and once I have done a sketch I feel more confident that I can translate it into paint.

So here she is. I am really pleased with how she turned out and it is the best painting I have ever managed of her! With this boost in confidence I tried to paint myself:

I enjoyed working in monotone for this one and it looks quite effective over the wash of colour. I look really serious but that is because I was looking in a mirror and concentrating! It didn't turn out too badly but doesn't look entirely like me. 

I am now on to the next one and I have really set myself a challenge by choosing to paint my daughter! Not only a face I know as well as my own but a child's face which in itself is difficult to do. So far I have only done my first sketch but so far so good;

I hope you enjoyed looking at my progress so far. I'll keep you posted on how the latest one turns out!

Bye for now xxxx

Getting Back To The Little Things

Hello All,

Sometimes it's the small scale projects which have the biggest impact. I love working on either index or post cards. They are a small piece of creativity that can be done when you don't have a lot of time for anything else and the results can be really exciting. By restricting yourself to a small area you can really focus on a particular medium or technique and I love seeing where they take me. Here are a few recent cards

In this one I added modelling paste through a stencil then used inks and metallic paint to add colour and gel pens to bring out some of the pattern. I found the text in a magazine which suited it perfectly.

This one is an experiment of adding layers of circles using different mediums and techniques. I finished it with some bottle top art (an even smaller canvas to work on!) and again some text from a magazine.

I hope you like them and hope they inspire you to go out and buy a pack of index cards to have a go!

Bye for now xxx