Back to the easel

It's time for me to knuckle down and really concentrate on my artwork. My long run of visitors is coming to an end after tommorrow night and my overtime at work is also slowing down, due to people being back off their holidays. It means I will have more time to myself again to work on my portraits.

I currently have one large graphite pet portrait of two dogs on my waiting list, so I will have plenty of time to work on other things whilst working on that. I am planning on working on some more ACEO's as well as completing a couple of graphite portraits I have been working on as 'portfolio' pieces. I am also going to knuckle down and practice the painting. I have got some fantastic books to work from and several ideas about how I want to go forward with my artwork and I think being able to produce realsitic paintings as well as drawings is going to be important.

Of course, anything new will be added here, so watch this space!

Brilliant new art book

I have just recently joined a book club that caters for artists. It's called Painting for Pleasure and is run by Reader's Union. My latest order arrived yesterday and one of the books I ordered is 'realism in watermedia' by Christopher Leeper. I find it hard to find art books that give instruction on how to paint in a realistic style. A lot of books out there give lots of advice on techniques but a lot of the artwork in the examples is very abstract, and I find it hard to adapt these techniques to produce realistic artwork. I've been looking for books that have step by step demos but also explains how the reader can acheive results in their own work. This book is one of them. It is written in a really nice, clear way and the text is accompanied by lots of photographs.

It has 7 chapters, and covers watercolour, acrylic and mixed media:

• basic materials
• plan values for impact
• painting from life
• painting from photographs
• watermedia techniques
• mixed media techniques
• step-by-step demonstrations

I very rarely read an art book and feel inspired to tackle some painting but this book has given some good advice and inspired me to have a go, so I will be good and work on my commissions tommorow, but I think I may tackle a painting at the weekend.

Siamese cat in Acrylic finished

I have finally completed my Siamese cat Acrylic painting today. As you know it was my first ever Acrylic painting. I learned the hard way about mixing enough of a colour - I had to do a second layer of the cream as I wanted to cover up some detail I was unhappy with but hadn't mixed enough so the second layer is too dark. I found the detail very hard to do, I just can't control a paint brush like I can a pencil. I was using a smaller brush than reccomended, but still couldn't get fine enough lines. I have posted the finished peice on the Pet Portraits forum I am a member of for some constructive criticism so I will let you know what comments I get from there. Here is stage 3 and then the final painting: