paintings prints and stuff

Swithland Woods, Inktense, a bit of pen and now some gouache and a touch of pastel. in S&B A4 sketchbook As I said, I wasn't happy with the background foliage ( here ) - so today I used it as an example of editing/adjusting for my class.   I won't finish the foreground off, it's still just a sketch but I was able to regain the highlights with gouache and intensify some darks, simplifying both but keeping the complexity of the foliage. detail better?

 Swithland Woods, detail.  Inktense, coloured pencil and a little ink  I sketched for a short while in Swithland Woods yesterday.   I'd taken my Inktense pencils - and lovely as they are I really really felt the need for oil paints to cope with dappled light and the ability to put back light over dark.  I'll have to get back there with my oils. Swithland Woods, S&B Beta A4 sketchbook, unfinished The sketch is unfinished because the background leaves got overworked and fussy as I tried to get the deep shade and brightly lit flashes of sunlit leaves - and the light changed dramatically, making the trees that had interesting light on them a few minutes before, simply silhouettes.  It would have spread further over onto the right hand page.   Woods are rather like seascapes though, where you have to work fast .  Oil paint would have let me do it in the time and with simple direct marks.  Pencil is so much slower even ...

 Detail of the drawing It's a long time since I did any drawing with ink and twigs.  They make such a lovely range of marks with different tones and textures, I should do it more often. The drawing below was done mainly with twigs from the garden (image at end of post)  but also a bamboo pen , a shaped wooden stirrer from a cafe, a Tombo pen , a Sharpie and a very little black coloured penci l.  The Sharpie was a little too hard edged and doesn't gel enough with the fluid inks I feel but it was a fun experiment.   Using J Herbin Gris Nuage ink, I couldn't get the darks quite dark enough, which is why I tried the Sharpie.   There is also a little Daler Rowny FW white acrylic ink in there. It was done in the Derwent Panoramic book, 16.54 x 7.08 inches, 110lb paper.   I tried using watercolour in this book without success, the paper was too thin and buckled.  It worked well with the ink though. Edge of the Wood, ink sket...

Mixed media, edge of the woods in A4 S&B Zeta sketchbook The paper in the new Zeta sketchbook is very very smooth and very heavy.  I was able to splash wet washes about, draw with a bamboo pen and pigment, and layer colours without them going muddy or dead.   The pen glided over the surface freely.  This is a hardback as I really like them, but you can also get a ring bound version for those who prefer them.  A lovely paper to work on :>) S&B books a re now available from Amazon UK I notice, for anyone wanting to try them out..  I'm really enjoying using them as the paper is such a lovely quality and the sizing means that colours retain their glow.   The pages in the hardbacks don't curl and lie flat for working across  a double page spread.  The Beta is on my packing list for my next trip to the coast. So has anyone tried them yet in the UK?

Edge of Charnwood, Derwent Inktense and Artbars in the Stillman and Birn Gamma Sketchbook I do lots of quick demos of different mark making options with various media materials in my classes.   Some end up as finished pieces but others have elements I like though aren't complete in themselves.   This collage is made up from torn fragments with just a very little extra work - a few lines in copper oil pastel and artbar. The rocks were once a stormy evening sky in a quick Artbar demo. The Artbars and Inktense are lovely to use with their ability to create graphic marks as well as washes of colour and the S&B paper is thick enough to hold up to the collaged elements well.

Autumn Woods: Derwent Inktense pencils and Studio pencils in a Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook I'd heard about S&B sketchbooks from American friends but they haven't been available in this country - and shipping costs made them out of the question.   They will soon be available here and I've got some to try out.  :>)   This is one of the Beta Series.   Heavy natural white paper with a rough surface. Curled up in the armchair, (it has been very cold here :>(   following a week of summer temperatures and sunshine) I decided to see how they behaved with my Derwent Intense pencils, with Studio pencils used over the intial washes and marks.   The answer was ...  so far, love this book!  The paper was delicious to work on, heavy and with a nice texture that didn't dominate the image but held marks. I was using a waterbrush from Derwent so the washes weren't very wet but there was a fair amount of water slosh...

  Winter  I'm still working my way through the lovely items that Derwent sent me to try out : > ) and have been adding things to the review I did of their lightweight, hardback sketchbook at the end of last year, as I've continued to doodle and see what things can do.    This first one is a view of the winter fields - the tin of tinted charcoal pencils was ideal for this and gave a lovely limited colour range of warm and cool that play against each other perfectly.   I can see me using these frequently for wintry days.  They are fast to work with which is a bonus in our current weather when plein air.  They would combine interestingly with other media.   Something I've yet to try out.  (edit:  I have now mixed them with inktense here   and will add more links as I try them with other media) Then I tried out their Academy Tame and Wild Set - also limited colours - whilst waiting for a family member visiting the GP....

Twilight Woods.  Digital image A complex mix of various of the samples done with the Derwent pencils and ink sketches.  This doesn't exist anywhere but in the computer - I do like tangled undergrowth like this and did a whole series of work on the theme in my final year of my degree - something I'd like to work on again a little.   On big canvasses.   And maybe focussing in on details as below: I'm making no New Year resolutions other than to go with the flow :>)

Phew it's all finished - well apart from putting things away.   This was the exhibition with a little group of friends - we meet up once a month to discuss work in progress, critique, sometimes arrange to visit exhibitions or sketch plein air and a couple of times a year put on these shows.   You'll probably recognise the work here. 3 intense days, lots of visitors, lots of nice things said, lots of interesting conversations. My browser - the portrait behind is the work of one of the friends. so ...... here are a few images from the show.

a detail from another image in the secret project - a 6 inch section of an A2 piece - to be explained later

Autumn, watercolour and mixed media, 8.5 x 5 ins approx Looking from the field's edge, across the stubble left after the wheat was harvested,  towards the far trees.     This one is a study in a limited range of colours - warms vs cools.   I really like the bleached colours of the dried grasses and stubble at this time of year.   Autumn isn't actually quite this far advanced here but I wanted to use this limited colour range so moved the calendar on a bit :>) This was done in watercolour, with the addition of watercolour pencil drawn and scratched into wet washes and a little biro (ballpoint pen).

Birch trees in the snow in the early morning mist 16x20ins oil on canvas Nearly finished but I'll probably keep tweaking it for a bit! The earlier stages are here and here and other trees are here . ...   and one that just didn't work - using coloured pencils on a mid brownish pastel paper.   Not a mix to repeat, for me anyway. The colours are too dulled by the paper, the pencils simply didn't have the intensity to cover it. I've got a small piece of Fisher 400 to experiment with - a friend, Nicole Caulfield, uses it for all her portraits and loves it.   I think I have to give it a go with watercolour and coloured pencils together.  

 Detail 1   detail 2 progress so far .... Still a little way to go but here is a quick update.  I'm waiting for the paint to dry before working on it further. You can see a bit of pentimenti* - the copper shape shining through in the trees at the back - some will remain but the unnatural shapes, like the circle and almost triangle,  will be lost/adjusted in subsequent layers and glazes. *Isn't that a nice word for an altered underpainting showing through?

  First Snow, finished and cropped I decided to add a few more marks, a little white gouache to add more direction to the snow and  to create a rising moon.   Then I cropped it. One of the advantages of the inktense is that no colour at all lifted to contaminate the white of the gouache.  I miss the ability to crop when I work on canvas. Better?   That's it anyway.  

First Snow - detail I've had a play with inktense blocks on A3 watercolour paper, working loosely from a previous sketch in coloured pencil in a sketchbook. First Snow, A3, inktense detail detail I really enjoyed drawing with them then swishing water over, leaving some of the lines to show through washes, then work on in glazes of colour, some dry marks left dry, some splattering, drawing on wet paper as well as dry.   So many potential marks :>) I had some of the holders but ended up working too fast to use them - so have multicoloured hands :>) A friend tells me she uses them on material in quilts and fixes them with a Delta medium - I need to look this medium up :>)   her quilts are gorgeous and well worth looking up

Moonrise, coloured pencil 11x14 inches A moody moonlit view in coloured pencil - another in the series for the upcoming show. There is another nearly finished which I'll show as soon as it's done, which plays with collage. I've been finding it hard to get time to paint/draw lately with work and family commitments. I'm really wanting to get some big canvasses out but first I need to finish this series of small works. Feedback and critique welcome :>) PS - ALERT - Bloglines is closing down :>( I'm going to miss it as I liked having one place to track anything I read. If you subscribe with Bloglines you'll need to choose another method. Maybe Follow with Google??

Winter Woods, Icy. Vivien Blackburn Today I wasn't in a 'serious' work mode so I played with watercolour, coloured pencil and oil pastel on Ingres pastel paper. The original is below - not very exciting, just an experiment to see how the media worked together on the Ingres paper (quite well - it's something worth experimenting more with). Simply an imaginary scene with no reference. Winter woods, experiment in watercolour, oil pastel and coloured pencil on Ingres pastel paper, about 10 inches, Vivien Blackburn Digital manipulation of the sketch above In this one I applied a dry brush effect first, to simplify shapes down and altered the colour balance slightly - more cyan in the highlights and more blue in the shadows. Then I duplicated the layer and applied a find outlines filter. This creates a layer of scribbly fine lines wherever it finds edges of shapes/colours. I upped the contrast on this layer to make it simply a light background with dark lines. I u...

Photographs of Swithland Reservoir: Vivien Blackburn Yesterday morning was sunny with long shadows, clouds and a lovely light. I wanted to go out to take some photos and sketch in the morning - my husband decided to come but wouldn't go until the afternoon. So, of course, the sun went in! I wanted particularly to look at this local reservoir - which for some reason I'd never been round. I'd checked the maps and a single track road went round one side of it. The overcast skies actually made for some lovely light on the water that I think I can definitely get some work out of - minimalist and using that lovely limited colour range and sheen on the water. It started to rain and then we had a thunderstorm, so sketching was out of the question - for me anyway! and he-who-moans-when-bored wouldn't have been a happybunny sitting in the car watching the rain on the water. (when new to driving, I ran the car battery flat by painting in pouring rain with the windscreen w...

Flooded slate quarry, Swithland Woods, Watercolour/mixed media, 11x14 ins approx, Vivien Blackburn The pale colours here in the ground are a little bleached out - they should have a pale pink/amber colour. Old flooded slate quarry, coloured pencil, approx 11x14 ins, Vivien Blackburn I've been looking at the old flooded quarry near Swithland woods in watercolour and coloured pencil. The slate that was quarried there is very ancient pre-Cambrian rock - the oldest rocks in Britain. Until recently it was thought that no fossils were preserved in this ancient rock - but recently fossils of ferns have been found (details of this and the geology and history of the area are in the links below). It's thought that the woods are the remains of primeval forest, having been there from at least 5,000BC. Links: The history of Swithland Woods, which may be the remains of primeval forest from 5,000 years BC Geology/History/walks in the area Photo of a larger pit nearby