ButterflEye

Lately I’ve been noticing a sad lack in my work of what I think of as ‘Dark Traditional’. So I decided to do something about that.

After the line work was done over the newly dried tinted paper, I used Indian Ink to wash in some gradated tones.

Then I added some vein-like structures on the wings to make them more interesting.

Finally I add ink droplets to the painting, which I’ve been looking forward to doing since I started to think about the image

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Rose

4B pencil on acrylic paper. I think this one’s going to be in my portfolio. I’m happy with a lot of the initial line work

Further along the line.

En kop kaffe, tak II

In this image, I have made highlights and more texture with pure white paint. In the Aux Trois Crayons technique, this would be known as ‘heightening’, since white highlights have a tendency to make a shape appear more 3d. Anyway, this white is far too stark for my liking.

Here, I’ve used a glaze of Burnt Sienna to knock back the white. This is one of acrylic paint’s great advantages – drying times and easy dilution. This would have hardly been possible with oils.

I think this painting is pretty much done now, so I’m going to leave it for a few days and see what I think later in the week. Then, it’s off to the Bistro!

En kop kaffe, tak

While a lot of my time is consumed with my oil commission, I find time in between drying and worrying about drying times and varnishes to paint other things. This is a painting on acrylic paper for my friend Ian’s bistro Bite Me

I’m trying to make it vaguely look as though it were an acrylic version of an aux trois crayons drawing, so I’m using a restricted palette of burnt sienna, ultramarine, alizarin crimson and white.

To create some interesting texture, I first sketched the outlined of the cup in thick white paint, which resists a later wash of Burnt Sienna, and has a little texture to drybrush over if I want.

Benu Bird

Waiting for an oil painting to dry enough that you can do more to it can be a long process, it seems. In the meantime, I’m posting excerpts from my various sketches and ink drawings, for the amusement of subscribers, mainly.

Tea demon

Today has been a quiet day; it’s a bank holiday in the UK and there’s not much doing. So I’ve had time to sit down, and when I sit down, I end up sketching.

The Tower Part II

This is the start of the painting I have done of the Tower. Starting from a base coat of Lemon Yellow, then worked a little Coeruleum and a darker yellow into the lemon yellow, to make it a greenish-gold. I then worked up the dark masses with a mix of ochre and burnt umber, and darkened them further with a dash of Ultramarine. I worked white into where the sky and water will be, but I’m leaving them vague until the next layer. Given the drying rates of this paint, that might be a week or so; in the meantime I may start other projects.

The Tower Part I

Here is the sketch for this idea, provisionally called The Tower. Though I originally never intended for this to be anything more than a sketch, I have since decided to use the idea as the basis for an oil painting.