Kurt Jackson

Last Thursday, our painting teacher, Penny organised a trip to St Barbe's Museum in Lymington to see the latest exhibition by Kurt Jackson (www.kurtjackson.co.uk), be given a talk by one of the museum staff and have a play with paints. The paintings are beautiful as is the video which is playing at the exhibition. It is well worth visiting if you are in the area. If not, have a look at his website to see examples of his work. Some of the effects are stunning, especially the way he captures sparkle on water and the use of colour.
An example my daubings and one of his paintings is shown here, as is a picture of my other playmates. The lady standing in the photo is our wonderful teacher Penny. (pennywilton.co.uk). Thanks for taking us out to play, Penny.

Virtual Sketch

I came across a blog site called Virtual Sketch. The idea is that every moth an image is posted and one week later you post your interpretation of that sketch on your blog. I thought I would give it a go this month. It is always interesting to see how different people interpret the same image. Anyway, these are my versions. One is in graphite pencil on Fabriano Artistico paper. The other is also on Artistico using Quink ink to outline and adding colour with Caran d'Ache watersoluble Neocolours. Because the Quink ink is watersoluble it mixes in with the colour washes to create shadow areas. This particular technique is used by Elda Abrahamson (http://www.elda-abramson.com).I used white wax crayon to act as a resist for the veins and light areas.
The pencil sketch has not reproduced too well for which I apologise.

EAC

I entered a couple of pieces for the EAC Over 60s Art Awards. One is of a feather, the other of the Dalai Lama. Unsurprisingly neither of the pieces were accepted but, nil desperandum, I will try again next year. The pieces I entered are uploaded here. My friend Eileen, has got a piece accepted and we are going to take it up to London in a couple of weeks time.
So, its literally back to the drawing board!
Talking of which, I have been experimenting using graphite pencil on black paper. I know that sounds strange but the effects are quite interesting. You get a silvery effect which changes according to the light. You can also make changes using different types of pencil, hard pencils give a dull, dark effect whilst softer pencils give an increasingly lighter effect. I have uploaded the doodle I did using the technique.

A first!!!!

I was chatting to a couple of painting friends, Janet and Sheila, a couple of weeks ago about coloured pencils. They are both flower painters. I am not. The upshot of the conversation was that I found myself promising to do a flower painting using coloured pencils....... Here is the result. It is done on mountboard using a mixture of Prismacolor and Faber Castell pencils. Suffice to say I will not be doing anymore floral art in the near future. I really did not enjoy doing it....do not get me wrong, I love flowers and have enough photographs to keep me in floral inspiration for the next thousand years! I just do not want to interpret them in any art media. Anyway for your delight or otherwise, I have uploaded the results.

Update

Really nothing too much to write about but I know there are people who like to read my ramblings. I finished my drawing of the Dalai Lama and have started one of David Tenant. I am really enjoying doing these pencil portraits and I may do more as and when I come across interesting faces. I would also like to do some animal portraits in graphite. Have also got a couple of colour pencil pictures lined up. As a result of a conversation with some friends from painting class I am going to have a go at flowers in colour pencil. Now flowers, plants etc are not a subject that I have done much of in any media so this is going to be a bit of a challenge, but one that I am keen to take up. I have drawn out a picture of some stargazer lilies. As soon as some colour has been applied I will post some pictures of the work in progress. Well, that should keep me busy.