Waiting

A long time ago I bought a box of 6"x6" canvases and promptly forgot about them as other stuff got in the way. Well, I found them again a week or two ago and realised it's been ages since I worked on canvas. 

Paper or board is often an easier option for the sort of heavily textured and layered pieces I like to make now because it doesn't have that natural give to it that a stretched canvas does and I find it easier to print or stamp or collage on. So a challenge for myself here, to see what I can do!

New Video - A Series of Postcards

Finally, I managed to get a new video filmed and edited. I'm working on a series of small postcard sized pieces here. I find that working on several pieces at the same time is helpful for quieting the inner critic and allows me to work more quickly and intuitively so it's something I like to do regularly if I can. Hope you enjoy the video!

Back To Nature

It looks as though we are finally having a bit of proper summer weather here this weekend and I have all the windows open to let the scent of roses into the house. Someone asked me the other day where I get the ideas for some of the more abstract work I do and the answer has to be, more often than not, nature. In my garden, on walks I take with Sam, I can't help but be fascinated by the songs of the birds, the way grasses move in the breeze, the colours and textures of leaves, trees and the landscape in general.

All this feeds into what I make and makes life so much more enjoyable too. When did you last spend time at rest in your garden or the local park? Do it today if you can, even if only for fifteen minutes or so. Just sit in a chair, lie on the grass, or shelter under a tree if it's raining, and pay attention to the sights, sounds and scents around you. I promise you'll feel all the better for it!

Gellis Again!

So, I have been finding other things to do with my stash of Gelli prints and one thing I decided to do was add paint and collage to an 'unfinished' print. Follow along with me here as I show you what I did!

Red Lands

Another 6-inch canvas today from the group I showed you in the previous post. This one got worked and reworked as I went through the hating-how-it's-going stage which always happens before it turns a corner and starts to look like something. 

It's available here, along with a few more views of it.

SOLD

Little Landscapes WIP

One of my favourite supports to work on is a chunky, small canvas. When I recently got a whole box full of six inch square ones I decided to prep a few in one go as I always find it easier to work on something which has had the 'newness' taken out of it. So I got out the modelling and texture mediums and applied some of those, followed by some almost random patches of colour.

I can thoroughly recommend this approach if you either have that 'blank page' discomfort or perhaps simply don't yet know what you want to paint. The canvas which ended up being The Inlet started out as the green and white one you can see in the other pics. I had a vague idea of the landscape I wanted to paint but it evolved as I was working on it into something different and, I feel, better.

Often the hardest job when creating something is just getting out of my own way and letting it happen.

Illumination

 

I have owned a large set of Karisma coloured pencils for several years now but hardly ever used them. Somehow, whenever I tried to work with them I felt really dissatisfied with the results, but every so often I dig the box out again and have another go.

This time I had something of an epiphany when I discovered that at least part of my problem has been that I just hadn't found the right paper to apply them to. I've tried a lot of different papers, including Bristol board which is often recommended for coloured pencil, and never liked the way the colour went on or the blending capabilities I had with it. For this drawing I used my favourite block of Arches hot pressed watercolour paper and, bingo!, I was much more at peace with my materials. 

 

It was one of those lightbulb moments and it reminded me that sometimes I really do have to just keep on keeping on, even when it might seem fruitless, because you never know what might happen next.

 

Burn, Baby, Burn

 

One of my resolutions for this year is to get back into encaustic painting, something which I love doing but haven't really touched for about eighteen months now. Encaustic simply means 'burnt in'. When applied to art it refers to painting with hot melted wax as a medium. Additives are often mixed in to change the colour and hardness of the medium but at its simplest, as here, it can be done with natural beeswax which looks and smells wonderful and imparts a subtle golden glow to the work.

These two small pieces are on birch panels and are comprised of a number of layers of collaged papers and hot wax. The layers are built up gradually and fused together to produce paintings with lots of depth and subtle effects which show up far better 'in the flesh' than they do in photographs!

A Little Pick-Me-Up

I realised the other day that what's missing in my winter (emotional and literal) landscape is colour. I don't do grey, which is kind of hard at this time of year, so as an escape route I've been painting with all the most saturated colours I can manage to find.

There now, that's better.