Tuesday 6 August 2013

06/08: OLD STUFF!

Haven't been home very much for the last week - lots of catching up with friends & family, bowls matches and our voluntary work .... but I finally got my 3 pictures framed ready to take Patchings Gallery, Nottingham in 3 weeks time for the UKCPS International Open Exhibition.    I've also had a tidy/clean up in the studio so feel ready now to start on the next drawing which will be coloured pencil.

I've been looking through hundreds of reference photos I've built up over the years looking for inspiration ... haven't found 'the one' yet but I did come across lots of pastel portraits from 2005 which was about the time I started drawing after a very long gap.   These were friends' horses and dogs and usually done in a couple of hours using soft pastels .... very basic / loose.    In those days I usually worked for the price of a bottle of Bacardi or similar LOL

Melody

merlin


Lily

Asti

Bally

Beau

Sadly most of these 4 legged lovelies are no longer with us ....

Shortly afterwards I drew my first 'human' - David (hubby).   Again this was done quickly.  He was being rude to me one morning so as soon as he left for work I found a photo of him wearing a beret (think it was part of a fancy dress costume) and by the time he came home from work I'd finished this and published on the website for all to see!


and from there I decided I really liked doing more detailed drawings and I concentrated on graphite work.   These are from 2006


and then I discovered coloured pencils ... and pastel pencils  so since 2006 my work has steadily been getting more and more detailed as pencils allow me to work much more delicately.  



Also there has been a huge improvement in the types/colours of support available for both pastel and cp work - I love sanded papers for pastel work and also the Clairefontaint Pastelmat textured paper for pastel and/or coloured pencils.

OK - enough old stuff for now ... must get ready now as we're meeting friends for lunch (so much for the diet)

If I don't get some new art work on the go soon you may be subjected to more 'art from the archives'. 


5 comments:

  1. i love seeing older work from people :) its great seeing how a person has improved and changed

    ReplyDelete
  2. Love to see this older work. The pic of the old woman in particular is brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm glad you said older work from people, rather than work from older people LOL.

    Thanks Jennifer. I was trying to find some photos of the art I did as a teenager, when I painted murals on bedroom walls - mostly Disney stuff. I think the pics may have been lost in a house move.

    I do cringe when I see some of my earlier pics ... but its possible some of these may still be hanging on walls as a tribute to long lost 4 legged friends.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Jo

    The old lady wasn't one of my own refs but now most competitions/exhibitions insist that ref photos must have been taken by the artist so I'm always on the lookout for interesting faces.

    Although Ilove the more detailed drawings, I must confess that I had more fun in the early days when I did the '2 hour quickies' and moved swiftly on to the next subject. Far less stressfull!

    ReplyDelete
  5. You still got a lot of detail in those 2 hour quickies and the portrait of David is wonderful. I'll bet he's secretly very pleased with it!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting my Blog. Let me know what you think :-)

I have disabled the Captcha requirement at the request of followers who find it irritating when posting comments. However to stop the subsequent flood of spam posts I can no longer accept comments from Anonymous sources.
Apologies if this is a problem
Thank you
Sue
x