Mothers' day stress

The original photo

Attempt 1: Pen and ink

Attempt 2 - watercolour

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 


So, mother's day is coming up and I've spent all this time painting, so what could be better than a drawing of her grandchildren.  Answer, a GOOD drawing of her grandchildren.  Being this nervous made me tense up, and the second attempt was okay but not great, I'm sending it anyway!  It's funny how I've painted my daughter as more as she is now than as she was 2 years ago when this photo was taken, and how I find her much easier to paint than my neice.

Last art class - cubist watercolours

My very last painting and drawing class - sob!  Since I've been fascinated with perspective, anatomy and clothing I decided to break down the model's torso as much as possible using pen and ink to create geometric blocks and watercolour to provide indications of shading.  It's not Picasso, but it solidfies the direction of my interests.

I was very happy with this last attempt at acrylics on an acrylic board that I got for my birthday.  Acrylic boards are great and I'll look out for more in the discount stores, they don't give like canvas on stretchers.  This wasn't supposed to be monochrome but ended up that way, I was mixing burnt umber with orange and white to get skin tones and focused so much on tone that colour kind of went by the way, but I prefer a restricted palatte anyway.  I actually started doing the head a little smaller but wanted to really focus in on the facial features after last week's figure drawing so I started again.  It's getting there

Conte crayons

My first try with the conte crayons I got in Manchester, just a lovely tiny pack of the four original colours, sanguine, white, black and brown, and I really enjoyed using them.  Less dusty than soft / chalk pastels but more controllable and sharp than oil pastels and didn't need any fixing.  This was a good likeness of the model, who was this striking, and the use of coloured paper really made the highlights stand out.  I feel I'm slowly getting a handle on anatomy and being able to see hue rather than just colour. I think I like exactness and a more graphic style rather than a diffuse style, I'm drawn to line and blocks of colour

Coloured paper is lovely

There's something really nice about drawing on coloured paper.  This week I was fascinated by the hands of the model so got myself up close and worked with white pastel on grey paper and really enjoyed myself, my only issue was fixing it, I used hairspray and it, well, dribbled a bit, so I think I need to buy the real thing.  There goes this month's pocket money!