I’ve been experimenting with my new paints… and I’m in love with quinacridone magenta!
Today’s Shoot it, Sketch it is all about colour and texture. The subject is something I sketched a few years ago (see below). The original photo is even older (2004 is not a typo). Just for fun, I used the sketch of the photo (rather than the photo) as my reference.
I hope you like this week’s Shoot it, Sketch it. The water and the seagull standing on the wall are two different paintings that have been combined in Photoshop. The gull was sketched in graphite and then painted using acrylics thinned with a gloss medium. The background and wall are thicker acrylics that have been applied with a palette knife.
You’ll be seeing a few more paintings over the next month as I come to terms with my new artists’ acrylics and the knowledge that I’ve just accepted a commission to do a large peony rose on stretched canvas! I do love a challenge : )
Today is my blog’s first anniversary. Yes, it’s been a whole year since my first post. A little retrospective seems in order.
Here are my top ten posts based on your likes and comments. It’s interesting to see what made the list and what didn’t.
Of all the things I’ve drawn, painted and designed over the last year, the little sparrow watercolour (below) — which didn’t make it into the top ten — is my personal favourite : )
Thank you all for your interest in this blog and for liking what I do.
This week’s Shoot it, Sketch it painting is based on the photo I used for last week’s post. When I decided to paint this beautiful little house, watercolour and ink seemed to be the obvious choice. Then my husband asked for an acrylic version. It turned out to be quite a challenge for me because I didn’t see it as an acrylic painting — at least not at first. But who am I to disappoint my biggest fan?
What a week I picked to use acrylics though! The weather in Christchurch has been rather warm and so the paint has been drying on the palette really quickly. It’s given a whole new meaning to the term ‘dry brush’! Click on the image(s) below to see more detail.
Others taking part in Shoot it, Sketch it are Clouds of Colour, The Little Leaf, Lunch Sketch, Poppytump, Two Scamps and Breana.
I’m going away on holiday in a couple of days (yay), so my next Shoot it, Sketch it will be 25th February.
I posted the artwork for Tim Gallant’s business card a couple of months ago but needed to finalise a few details before completing the design. Tim has a longbow-making business and is a talented drum teacher/musician.
The two finger salute included in the design is a gesture sometimes referred to as the Longbowman Salute and may or may not date back to the 1415 Battle of Agincourt. I drew the ‘salute’ as a medieval gauntlet and added a couple of other elements to create a logo that is, I hope, more humorous than offensive. The colours and layout were inspired by the Gallant Family coat of arms.
The background (below) was serendipity at its best. I painted it on a piece of nothing-special cardboard using some acrylic paint left over from another project. I thought it would be quite a smooth surface but, instead, the paint accentuated every little bump and ridge…but it scanned beautifully. I tweaked the colours in Photoshop to better suit the business card and voilà. Where would we be without happy accidents?
I ventured into unfamiliar territory to produce today’s Shoot it, Sketch it. Well, it’s really more of a Shoot it, Sketch it, Peel it, Shoot it, Sketch it!
My inspiration was the leftover paint from last week’s random texture. When I lifted the dry paint off the plate I use as a palette (it just seems a bit more environmentally friendly than rinsing it down the sink), I thought the blobs of acrylic paint (shown in the photograph) looked quite beautiful and wondered if they could be used in a kind of Rorschach inkblot kind of way to inspire a new painting. And the answer is yes. Yes, blobs of paint CAN be remote islands on an old map — if that’s what you want them to be.
Also taking part in the Shoot it, Sketch it experiment are Clouds of Colour, The Little Leaf, Lunch Sketch, Poppytump and Two Scamps.
Anna Cull ~ Art & Music 