Joan and graphite

No, the two are not linked, though my good friend Joan is a whizz with both pencil and paintbrush! Last week it was her 80th birthday. Here are pictures of the birthday girl with the present we gave her...I think she was pleased!!!! Although she may not be so pleased to see her photo's published here.

I have recently been playing around with graphite pencil work having seen some of the amazing work being done in that medium. To see what I mean take a look at these sites:

http://www.onlypencil.com
http://www.jdhillberry.com
http://www.sibleyfineart.com

I have no hope of ever being that good, but I can have a god try at getting somewhere with the pencil. Recently, I found an extremely good book by Kaaren Poole about drawing animals. I have uploaded some of my efforts which I thoroughly enjoyed. The advantage of pencil work is that you do not need a lot of equipment. Apart from the paper, all the equipment I use goes in a smallish pencil bag.

I will post future efforts here....hopefully showing some improvement.

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.