Birthday presents

I couldn't post this acrylic painting before because it was for my husband's birthday, I have the same problem with another project which won't go up until Christmas!  It's him skipping stones on our holiday in Orkney, and he was thankfully happy with it!  I'm mostly happy, especially with the movement in the sky and water, and the body which was very difficult to draw, but I think I'd do a slightly better job of the anatomy now.  The funny moment was when I took it in to work on the body, in particular the stripes on the jumper which weren't dark enough and the details of light on the body to get movement into it.  I was happy with what I'd done and turned away to do the conte crayon sketch of the model, when my teacher commented that that was great, that I could leave it and go back to it.  I was finished! 

The second picture is by my 7 year old for her daddy's wall at work, his work smokes fish so she wanted to do a fishy for him.

New year better handle on acrylics

Following the demonstration by our wonderful (and patient) teacher I tackled acrylics again, this time working on a background painted in mahogany-red acrylic first with charcoal, then following the lines in dark brown and finally working on the picture with a range of browns, oranges and white for an actually pretty good likeness!  Really enjoyed this, feel I'm beginning to get a grip on how to paint.  John encouraged us not to refine too much and the result is expressionistic and lively

Acrylic and a little bit out of hand

This was my first try with acrylics and the drawing was fine but then I was faced with the problem of how do you keep the drawing when you paint.  Apparently you can paint in the lines, use charcoal which is darker or build up in layers 'thin to thick' but I just went for thick right away, and the effect is certainly striking if a little overly spontaenous!  Had great fun with the one thing that was under control, the colour, because I was only using alizarin crimson and one shade of blue with white, although I learned never to walk away and come back with acrylics, it's dry by then.  Oh, and that alizarin crimson is very very strong!