paintings prints and stuff

South Stack, near Holyhead, A3 pastel plein air  This is at the framers at the moment,  in preparation for an exhibition, along with lots of other work from the week painting in Wales.  It will be going in a lime washed frame. Vivid memories of a lovely day sketching on the cliff with friends somewhere near, doing their own views - that's a steep drop down via the path and then another steep cliff edge.  One friend was working down there, another much higher up looking way down at the lighthouse (just out of sight on the right).  What did we do before we had mobile phones?  so easy to coordinate coffee breaks and moving on when we spread out and aren't near each other. I used a sheet of Sennelier sanded paper for this and the Rembrandt and Inscribe pastels I'd thrown in at the last moment.  Oh dear, I did NOT like the Sennelier paper - luckily I'd swapped a sheet with a friend as she didn't like it and I got to try it without having to buy a ...

Digital image:  Harlequin and Columbine series This is another in the series, working out ideas for large paintings.  I see these on 4 or 5 foot canvasses.   Playing digitally with colour and shapes. These are abstracts based on the costumes of Harlequin and Columbine but about the patched and ragged fabrics, stage lights and time passing in the long history of the Commedia del Arte. What do you think?

Columbine, digital variation I had flu immediately after Christmas and am only just recovering - I have never been so ill!  it was vicious and in the end needed antibiotics and high dose steroids.  But Christmas itself was lovely :>) So ..... the blog has been very neglected.  Here is an update on one of the Harlequin/Columbine series.   They are playing with the the idea of time, ragged and patched fabrics and stage lights.  This is a digital variation on the previous monochrome.  I'm thinking of including these prints as something in their own right, apart from them being a sketchbook stage in thinking ideas through.  I've done further work in a variety of media that I will upload, including scratchboard in black over copper, something I don't think I've used since school!  so more to follow ..... And Happy New Year

A new project, working around ideas with ink I'm revisiting an old idea and developing it.   Some time ago I did a couple of abstract paintings based on the idea of the Harlequin costume from the Comedia del Arte.   One shown below is a 30x40 inch canvas. The one above was also trying out my new Sailor Flude pen - which I really like.  It's odd curved tip allows me to draw with the pen quite upright or tip it to make broad marks- the thickness of the lines in the sketch above were all done with the one pen, just angled differently. Harlequin.   Mixed media on canvas 30x40inches This time I'm looking at Columbine as well - her costume sometimes echoed the pattern of Harlequin's.   Costumes - the Comedia company were travelling players - costumes were often ragged and patched, which was the origin of the diamond pattern now seen as traditionally Harlequin.   I have got hooked on the raggedness as well as the patterns of...

My commissioned  image on the Derwent website I was asked to provide an image using Inktense for Derwent, who were revamping their website.  It's now live.  :>)   .... and they forgot to add my name! It's about flowers rather than being any particular flower.  There are elements of poppies and Queen Anne's Lace and heaven knows what else in there.  Purely imaginary.  It's based on a large canvas I did some time ago. The original much larger canvas Inktense is one of my favourite Derwent produ cts (alongside the XL tinted graphite and tinted charcoal) .  I love the vibrancy and yet it is also possible to mix them to obtain subtle colours.   They are more transparent and luminous than ordinary watercolour pencils and because they dry waterproof I can build glazes and work over layers below as in my image that they used.   I use the pencils and the blocks. It was great to be asked - they previously used an ima...

 Abstract flower, A3 on Khadi paper with watercolour and mixed media Untitled as yet - any ideas? I went to an artist's talk last week and she demonstrated how she did her large scale flower paintings.  A good talk but  I wasn't keen on her methods or results - too methodical and literal for me, involving tracing photographs and carefully colouring in between the lines with layers of the same colour - but it did make me feel like doing another abstracted flower painting and just playing with colour.  So instead of working on the seascapes, I did this.  It's still subject to change!  there may be updates. Possible crop? It's based loosely on a slightly smaller pastel I did some years back.   That was loosely based on some beautiful bearded iris in the garden of a house in France we'd stayed in. The A3 Khadi paper I used is very absorbent and the paint sinks into it.  It also has a strong woven sort of texture.  The ...

    Of Flowers.  Mixed media on canvas. The image below is a part of avariation on this canvas which you can read about here - each version exploits the mark making potential of the medium used.  The flower is purely imaginary and abstracted.  It's about flowers rather than being a flower.  I was asked to do a commission with abstracted flowers and this is a fragment ....   Fragment of a commisssion, using Derwent Inktense I can't show it yet.  All will be revealed later, when the website it and another image, are done for is up and running :>) now to look at paperwork : >(  and hopefully paint some more ....

  Cat carving and cardoon by lamplight, coloured pencil in A3 moleskine Still looking at the items on the shelf above the tv but moving them around on paper, rearranging and looking at pattern and colour.  They aren't in the positions I've drawn them in at all and I've simply used the colour of the vase, though lightening it, not wanting the vase itself explained.  The same with the wheat and hearts patterns.  Warm light from the lamp and the cool lavender shades are observed so that the whole thing hangs together. Below are the earlier stages as it evolved.  I only have a rough idea of the final piece when doing this, unlike a traditional set up, where everything is where it will be in the image.   It evolves as I go.  Major elements like the cat carving, cardoon, blue of the vase and the honesty are decided immediately - they are the skeleton that everything hangs on.   Decisions about depth of tone, lost edges, patterns...

Study for a larger work, coloured pencil in A4 moleskine, honesty It's cold, very very windy and raining cats and dogs.   I'm lucky that we aren't affected by the terrible floods affecting large areas of the county but I still don't want to go out in it!  So I'm continuing to look at still life, a subject that I rarely do as a finished painting, preferring to do occasional studies of things that interest me and concentrating mainly on landscape. The items on the shelf over the tv, lit by a table lamp caught my eye - a vase of honesty, wheat stalks and a large cardoon head, a carved wooden cat, some carved abstract birds on a tree, the lamp and a bright pottery cat.  So .... how to make a different arrangement of them? playing with colour and pattern, not simply doing them ' as is ', which didn't interest me. Switching the lamp on gave wonderful colour contrasts, the shadows having a positive lavender colour and the highlights a warm amber.  Lig...

A3 Khadi paper, watercolour, charcoal and ink, variations on a theme I've done a series of variations on this theme from the same original objects. Using sketches done from life I've then simplified, moved things around on the paper, played with patterns and in different media, rather like the way musicians plays with a theme, creating variations and counterpoint. I'm exploring the ways that still life can interest me as I don't find doing conventional set ups do. This one started with tinted watercolour washes, in a variety of greys that I mixed, developed with charcoal and white and paynes grey acrylic inks, with a little white oil pastel.  It's fun to work within a limited colour range like this. The Khadi paper is interesting to work on.  It's pure rag, heavy and quite absorbent so the paint doesn't sit on the surface as with some papers.  The paper is curling in the photo as it was still damp but it is actually square straight edged.   A...

Experimenting with still life - jazz in paint.  Watercolour and oil pastel I meet up with a group of friends, fellow painters, once a month and we critique each others work, talk about art, exhibitions. artists etc and put on exhibitions ourselves.  We all work very differently.   We decided to challenge ourselves to tackle a subject we rarely do - still life - and each find an angle on it that makes it interesting to us.  We've talked about doing a project on it for some time and decided to stop talking and start doing : >).  We all have to take an A3 painting to the next meeting.  This is mine so far. As usual, the photograph doesn't bring out some of the subtle colour changes : >( This is based on sketches I did a year or two ago- you can see some of them here , here , here and here . This one was done with watercolour on Khadi rag paper (A3) with some gold, copper,  orange and irridescent pale blue Sennelier oil pastel scri...

Digital experiment with small abstracts. Vivien Blackburn I'm working out options for this series.   The original ones were manipulated in photoshop, playing with colour variations and rotating/flipping. I quite like the idea of doing a series of 9 framed liked this on either black or white. Which do you prefer for the background - black or white? I think the white background has a clean freshness but the black has an added glow.  

Another in series of tiny abstracts, playing with the interaction of colour, shape and space This one was done using Derwent's studio pencils over an inktense underpainting, on Fisher 400 paper.   I like the way that Derwent's Coloursoft pencils work with this paper better, though these worked well, the Coloursofts were richer when used like this (not so on normal paper). Working with the underpainting allows me to create the same sort of effects that I can achieve in oils - changing subtly or overlaying very different colour opaquely,  and is a really useful way of playing with colour and ideas.   and another variation with the same materials  and there's more ..... I may arrange them in a grid, keeping each element small with the grid black or a deep linking colour - decisions decisions .... what do you think?

A series of tiny (2 inches and less) studies for possible large canvasses.  Derwent Coloursoft on Fisher 400 paper, underpainting in watercolours.   Vivien Blackburn  Tiny Abstracts with Derwent Coloursoft pencils  and watercolour on Fisher 400 paper: I had some tiny left over scraps of the Fisher 400 and decided to experiment with water colour washes, overlaid with Derwent Coloursoft pencils (which work beautifully over this paper, so intense and rich). As I'm not getting out to work plein air at the moment, due to the cold not being great for arthritis, I thought I might work on some canvasses where I'm simply using luscious colours to create space, mood and lovely interactions of colour. The Coloursoft on the Fisher paper allow me to throw in those unexpected intense bits of colour, over deeper washes beneath, like those touches of vivid red that float over the underlying colours.   Mixing media like this allows me to do this - to let the...

Blue, Viridian,Rose, Lemon and Bronze,  16 ins square on paper This one is based loosely on previous colour pencil still life experiments shown here on the blog earlier - but bigger and bolder and using water based media. I didn't want to do a traditional set up so the elements are moved around, abstracted a little, colours intensified and the division between pattern and reality blurred. The original coloured pencil sketches are here ,  here ,  here , here  , here , here and here . What do you think?  

Work in progress This one is a development in a series I was working on - the original arrangement was very traditional, set up by a friend.   The colours appealed to me but not the arrangement, so I decided to play with the shapes and invent some patterns. The colours are terribly difficult to show as the coppery rose colours don't come out well - the vase and some of the leaf patterns are a really coppery rose colour and not as brown as they appear here.  There is also a lot more variation in the blues as they slide from greeny to puplish.  The coppery/rosy colours play beautifully against the turquoises and blues but it isn't picked up well by the camera :>( I moved objects around, played with pattern - leaf patterns on vases or material blurring into real leaves, the difference between reality and pattern blurred. It's one I can work on in quiet moments in the evening, when the TV isn't exactly absorbing.  It's in an A4 moleskine, which means I can...

detail 1: 4 inch section of Landscape, 14 x4 inches approx, collagraph with coloured pencil on Fabriano Rosapina paper detail 2 : 3 inch section of Landscape, 14 x4 inches approx, collagraph with coloured pencil on Fabriano Rosapina paper The whole image : Landscape, 14 x4 inches approx, collagraph with coloured pencil on Fabriano Rosapina paper I came across this 14x4 inch collagraph in the 'do-something-with-this-later' drawer. I think it was an offcut from a larger collagraph plate, cropped before it was printed and then printed with the same inks that I'd been using (green and yellow), just to see what happened. It had originally been vertical and part of a seahorses/underwater series of printmaking. Looking at it horizontally I saw a landscape. Using coloured pencils I worked on it in warm rosy hues to contrast with the cooler green. I want to darken and cool with deep blue the area around the right hand tree a little before I'll call it finished I think. ...

Blue still life version 2 , watercolour and mixed media with copper metallic Sennelier oil pastel, Vivien Blackburn Another version from the same starting objects - playing with blue leaves from a vase pattern (top left) and green real leaves (top right), with the pattern of the cloth and plate floating, weaving in and out and elements used wherever I wanted them rather than where they actually were. Hillary asked if I minded her doing a theme like this with her group and I suggested she leave a link to the work they did in the comments section . Challenge: Does anyone else feel like having a go? a challenge? I haven't thrown out one of those for a while. Have a go at playing with still life items in a non-conventional way and then post a link in the comments on this post and later - about a month or 2??? - I'll do a post with links to everyone who took part. For ideas and inspiration look at the list of artists on the earlier post and then find some others you know and ...

Copper and Rose, digital image, Vivien Blackburn I experimented with the image from yesterday in the computer and this is one variation I came up with. I love the colours in this one - I must do this as a large painting. Still life is definitely starting to interest me!

Work in progress, collage and mixed media: Birches and Pool. Vivien Blackburn Leading on from those previous studies and sketches done from trees plein air - this is the piece currently being worked out, abstracting and developing the work. This one may be going to America. It's 11x14 - I'd really like to be doing this much bigger but that's the size it has to be for this show. Details: The top and the sides are a sort of ambiguous border - elements overlap and weave across but it is disjointed and separate from the central part. The top section has yet to be finished but most of the rest is complete. All the trees are separate pieces of paper/painting and the background and foreground terrain are collage (papers that I've painted myself, cut and torn). You can read a bit more about it here Feedback welcome - any thoughts anyone? Click on the above image for further work on trees