Focus on colour

This morning I decided to record the view from my porch of the trees across the road. I want to find out what kind of trees they are, but I'm getting off subject.

Working with my kid's cheapo felt tip pens I scribbled in the tree with the bushes behind, and the grey sky. I tried to blur it with water and a brush, but the ink wasn't moving, so I photo-shopped it slightly to mess it up a bit. It's not good, but I learnt something by just looking at the colours. Ed Terpening works in colour, and he's an inspiration. How he achieves what he does with no use of line, just patches of paint I would love to learn. So I've ordered myself a book on Amazon this morning called Colour and Light in Oils by Nicholas Verrall and Robin Capon, and I intend to work through it, alongside my Penshaw project, and try to banish my ignorance and fear of colour and my dependence on line.

One down...

Yes, I think that looks better. I want to do a few more of these using the same 'scribbling' technique with brush pens. But I want to be braver with the colours.

No lines, only shapes & colour

That's today's project, as suggested by my older sister. So I've scaled up a previous drawing onto watercolour paper, so I don't have to worry too much about proportions. Now I'm off to choose some music, and make another coffee, and get started on it. Here goes .......

New Studio, New Canvas

I've started a new canvas, A3 size, using two of my nude torso photos. I've reversed the one on the right, and it's the one I've painted before, so now I'll be looking at it in reverse so can see it with a new eye.

I'm happy with it so far, though I want to deepen the blues, and work on the shapes of the mid-tones. This is the first piece of work that I've done in stages, stopping after an hour or so to come back to at a later time.

And already I want to do a series of these, on a wider horizontal canvas, and on a tall canvas, and maybe stretching the images, or skewing them. Maybe adding a lot of foreshortening. It's like the images I can see in my head already exist, and I just need to bring them into existance in this present time. Definately, the last canvas I painted already has a life of it's own when I look at. Like it's a separate thing, not just something I've painted. I hope this makes sense, because it does to me. At least, not yet! But it will.