Category Archives: painting

Daily Painting: Toys (First Half)

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While the theme for November is toys, I have a few other aims for the month. Having bought a set of artist quality gouache paints, I want to get in some practise with them. Another goal is to up in one place and use the same lighting for all paintings. I was pretty chuffed with the first one.

However, it took me 2 1/2 hours. I can’t spare that much time every day of this month, and while I hope to get faster from practise, I need to choose toys that are simpler to paint. Like this wooden train. I left out the carriages.

While the train was one of Paul’s childhood toys, this Pink Panther was one of mine.

The colour mixing was weird. I’m using a warm spotlight on the toy, while the easel light has a cool ‘daylight’ globe. The coloured card of the background influences the slightly off-white card on the table top. As I’m mixing I’m holding a loaded brush up in front of the colour I’m matching to get as close as possible to the colour I’m seeing, but the result is startling – usually much darker that I expect. Yet it looks fine in the painting.

I have a box of amusements I used to keep on my desk when I worked in an office, including this this keyring sized Etch-a-Sketch

A bath toy.

Very old puzzles. I think they belonged to my Dad, so they might be much older than me.

My teddy bear. I was never one for soft toys, but I have a few favourites.

I had a few matchbox cars as a child. My favourite is this red Mini.

As a teenager I used to charge to solve other kids’ Rubik’s Cubes.

One of my Mum’s toys. The lid of the teapot was lost before she gave this to me, and the stalk of the apple disappeared since then.

A tiny teddy bear made by my friend, KRin.

Slinky! I did the outline and background the night before, because I knew this one would be a challenge.

Lego! Having taken out my small box of Lego, which comes out for visiting children, I decided to see if I could put together all of the sets I had. They were from the mid 70s, with the original larger figures. Paul and I made eight sets, including one minifig set, but from the remaining pieces I reckon there’s a vehicle and house set we can’t identify. Though it’s always possible there was some migration of pieces to and from my box and my brother’s.

KRin’s bean bag Totoro.

Halfway through the month, I’m both having the time of my life and starting to get a little overwhelmed. The latter is more to do with having so many other things demanding attention or sapping my energy. Some of those things are good, like returning to art classes, ongoing 8-shaft course samplers and making Christmas presents. The rest are either too personal or boring to mention here. At the same time, I’ve been exploring ideas to revamp the look of this blog, and what theme, medium and ground I’ll use for December’s daily painting.

Can’t complain I’m not occupied!

Helping Hands

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Recently I’ve been watching art demonstration videos on YouTube, starting with James Gurney, then various other artists. Inspired, I’ve been doing a bit of art at home and wishing I could go out and paint en plein air.

Many more portable easel options are available since I last looked, from expensive ponchard boxes to cheap DIY set ups that attach to tripods. I was particularly amused by a laptop conversion I saw, though I suspect it wouldn’t be a practical solution in the long run. I have a DIY ponchard box I made in 2010 and a plastic version I put together for our trip to Central Australia. They all rest on my knees, which means I need to sit down when painting. Having something fixed to an easel would be much more flexible.

I bought James Gurney’s video on his DIY sketching easel and as I watched it, I couldn’t help thinking all that wood looked heavy. Or at least, heavier than I was willing to carry. All the clips and magnets holding things to the boards made me wonder if the boards could be eliminated and the clips remain. A bit of searching later, I bought this:

It’s called ‘helping hands’, and is for soldering. I was worried that the arms would be too weak to hold a palette, diffuser and sketchbook/canvas board steady while I worked, but they’re impressively sturdy. It has a hole in the base for screwing it to a table, which Paul enlarged and created a thread that matches the quick-release plates on tripods. And that hollow in the centre is just right for a water container.

The next step was to gather the things the clips would hold. James uses pencil tins as palettes, and I didn’t manage to find one before the lockdown, so had to order a tin of pencils online, which took ages to arrive. The first diffuser I came up with used bamboo skewers and bendy straws for the frame and white plastic sheet for the fabric, but both double-sided and masking tape peeled off the plastic so I wound up sewing on some white poly-cotton instead. I wasn’t going to attempt to buy kite fabric from Spotlight as they’re slow getting orders out so with Aussie Post delays on top who knows when it would arrive. At the moment if something can’t be bought in a supermarket, chemist, baker, butcher or green grocer, I’ve got to either make it using bits and pieces around the house and garage, or just do without.

Once I had all the components lockdown had eased enough that I could leave the house for a ‘picnic’. Reluctant to go out on my own in case people approached me, I invited a friend to keep me company and shoo people away. She agreed and we set a date and time… and when the moment came it was waaaay too cold.

I had to begrudgingly acknowledge that all this waiting for the perfect conditions was silly, and I should just paint, darn it! I found a sketchbook challenge and put the easel aside. But then it turned out one of the themes did require a bit of outdoor work:

I’m pleased to say that my easel idea worked. I wound up swapping the front and middle sets of arms around so that the front ones weren’t in the way and the book was closer to me, which meant the water bottle had to sit on the palette, but that was fine. The least successful thing was the diffuser. It flaps around in the wind too much, which is a problem with the construction, not the arms holding it. I’d need a lighter tripod if I’m going to carry it far, too, and the IKEA kid’s paintbrushes are about as good as you’d expect.

Overall, a surprisingly successful, if rather whacky, DIY easel.

A Proper Holiday

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A few weeks back we went to Central Australia for a fortnight. We’d chosen the destination because: a) I wanted a proper holiday not sightseeing tacked onto a work trip, b) we wanted to see the Field of Lights, and c) travelling locally appealed more than venturing into an increasingly crazy world.

Since we don’t enjoy hot weather, timing it for winter seemed wise. It was colder than I expected, though. While it was 19 – 22 degrees during the day, it took a while to get there when it was windy or shady there was a definite chill in the air. Still, I’d rather that than 46 degrees in mid-summer!

Because my back can’t cope with long hours in a car, we flew there rather than drive, and took ‘hop on hop off’ and tour buses to Uluru, Kata Tjuta, King’s Canyon Resort and the canyon itself, then to Alice Springs. Once in Alice we hired a car to explore the MacDonnell Ranges.

It was a great little trip and though we never restricted our meal choices all the walking meant that, for once, I returned lighter than I left. As I said to Paul, we could eat whatever we wanted normally so long as we did this much exercise… which simply isn’t possible when you have to spend time working.

I always do a bit of sketching when on holidays – just some watercolour and ink in a book. This time I wanted to get a bit more serious. What I really wanted to do was take my portable oil painting box. However, it’s made of wood and we were doing to be doing a lot of walking. There were also the issues of not being able to take turps on a plane, and oils needing a long time to dry.

To deal with the weight issue, I hit on the idea of using unstretched canvas you can buy in pads rather than boards. I went shopping for a plastic container, and found the perfect one in Daiso, with a compartment the right size for brushes and spatula, and room in the lid (once I’d carved the compartment dividers flat) to hold a painting in place without it touching anything. It just required a piece of card to support the painting, and two cable clips to keep it in place.

The turps and drying time problem was solved when I had a brainwave and remembered that you can get water-soluble oil paints. No need for turps, and they dry faster – and even more rapidly if you use “fast drying medium”.

When everying arrived from Senior’s Art, I squeezed paint into a pill dispenser (also from Daiso) that just happened to fit into one of the smaller compartments, and decanted some of the medium into a squeezy bottle from my silk painting days.

Here’s the complete kit:

For a palette I took a pad of tracing paper that fit into the other small compartment, thinking I’d just rip off a page when I’d finished a painting. This was the major failing of the kit. I simply didn’t have enough room to mix the colours I needed. Eventually I replaced it with a fast food container lit about the same size as the kit, and painting instantly became much easier.

The first painting was quite simple, to allow me to get used to a newish medium and the local light and colours. I wasn’t all that happy with a painting until I got to the fourth, and I realised that if I was to do a trip with the sole intention of painting I needed to allow myself time to familiarise myself with a location.

I’d also take a seat or at least a pillow. A sunhat is not barrier enough between my butt and icy cold rocks at 7:30 in the morning!

I could have done another painting on the last day of the trip, but I decided not to because I was too tired, and a little tired of painting to be honest. Overall I enjoyed the challenge and I’m glad I did it, and happy my lightweight painting kit performed so well. It would be great to take it on more holidays, or on day trips.

Which will probably be within Australia. It was so nice not to have to deal with long flights, jet lag, customs and security queues, adapting to very different languages and customs, carrying passports and power point adaptors. I’m keen to organise another trip, and see more of this great country.

Portrait of George

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I’ve finally finished another portrait.

The most difficult parts were the shirt and arm. While the shirt design was fiddly, it was getting the ‘white’ background of it right that was trickier. I painted it three times before I was happy.

I’ve started my next one. Here’s the underpainting done:

I kinda love how weird it looks at this stage.

Spring Painting

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I’ve started going to two art classes a week recently – painting and life drawing. My teacher is retiring at the end of the year, so I’m absorbing as much of her wisdom as possible. Fortunately, her niece will be taking over the class next year. Annie has been working alongside Carol for the last few months, so she will be familiar with all the students once she goes it alone. Her teaching style is bound to be different, but we get along well so I’m looking forward to working with her.

I finished Jane’s portrait a month or so back.

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Though I did a photo shoot with a writer friend, the only photos that came out well were in a pose too close to a previous portrait. So I revisited him and did another shoot, and came up with two more choices. Here it is with underpainting and one session of oils applied:

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Because I had to do a second shoot, I had one class with no portrait ready to start on. So I stole some photos of cats from friends’ Facebook feed and painted a mini portraits on a 10cm x 10cm canvas. I did one of Peri Peri years ago. They’re fun and quick to paint, and I’d like to do a whole lot more of them.

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On the Face of It

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It’s been ages since I posted about the portraits I do. Well, it’s been ages since I finished one! Now I’ve finally got something to show off:

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I’ve really enjoyed this portrait, but it’s been a slow one. I started it in September. Art classes end at the start of November and resume in March, and though I did manage a few painting sessions during the break I didn’t like what I’d done and painted over it later.

My previous aims to speed up and get four portraits done a year are long abandoned. If a painting needs more time I have no choice but to give it more. And I’d rather take the time to do a good job.

Rachel, Alan & Jason

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I had hopes of finishing four portraits this year, but the last six months were so hectic I only got one done, making it a total of three for the year. That was especially frustrating as by mid-year I felt I was starting to get a hang of painting with a spatula.

Rachel
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Jason
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Alan
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Maybe next year I’ll bump it up to four. I’ve just started the next one, and I have a few people lined up who are keen to pose for me.

Rachel’s Portrait

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I thought I’d finished Rachel’s portrait a month or so ago, but after looking at it for a week I decided to do some tweaking. Mostly adding reflected colour to the balloons. Only then was I happy to sign it and call it ‘done’. Today I delivered it to Rachel, who now has to find a wall space large enough for it.

It was a fun portrait to do. Bright and cheerful, and a nice contrast to Jason’s portrait, which is all dark and moody. Doing two portraits at the same time has worked well for me, even though I usually only work on one at each class. I’ve started to take for granted that I know how the paint will go on using the spatula this way or that, and how far I can push the paint around before it muddies, though I still stuff up regularly. Thankfully oils are very forgiving.

Jason’s portrait is close to done. Another session, I hope. Last week I also did the underpainting for the next one:

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Works in Progress, or Not

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As I mentioned in the last post, I’ve finished Rachel’s portrait. Well, mostly. There are some tweaks I want to make, now I’ve had time to examine it critically. I’d be doing them this morning, if I wasn’t in the goopy, vertigo-ey, exhausting phase of a head cold, and not wanting to spread it around.

Jason’s has a session or two to go:

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I’ve started stitching on one of the garments I wanted to embellish. After a few false starts, I settled on purple and mauve flowers with green branches winding between them.

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I started the eye:

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The leno scarf isn’t finished because I’m holding off working on it. I want to show it to the weaving group:

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The Double Trouble baby blankets are going slowly.

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The art necklace… what necklace?

Portrait Update

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Both of the portraits have progressed since I last blogged about them two months ago:

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I’m not avoiding Jason’s face and hands, I just love painting clothing too much. And it amuses me that, with the underpainting showing, it looks like I’m painting a green man.

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I’d worked on Rachel’s face three times at this point and there’s still some work to do. Her eyes are more open on the reference, for a start. Her lips need refining. The balloons will get more tweaking, too. They’re still a bit flat, texturally.