Tracey Potter at http://traceypotterartist.blogspot.com/ has started a link party which you can post about what you're working on, your paint, palette and other items you are using to create your art. Awesome idea! So I'm joining in this week with my latest piece, self-titled "The Sheep Lady". (It's to be used as a signature piece for my blog I think).
I used ephemera and images from various sources for the collage, and then sketched in the image. They are a collection of old sheep & wool ads, wool dockets and breed references.
Then washed it with some special Acrylic paints from Derivan Matisse; Australian Skyblue and Australian Sienna. I cannot seem to mix these wonderful colours and they are exactly the hues I want to convey the red dust and brilliant blue of the sky. I'm using Jo Sonja acrylics for now, however I asked Santa for a brand new set of Artisan water-soluble oils for christmas and I have a sneaking suspicion thats what I'll be getting!
This is as far as I have finished so far, I am still working on the neck, shirt and sheep in between tending to babies and working at night. I had to rework the face and neck a bit cause something just wasn't right. Oh well, I am learning and you learn from your mistakes.
My palette is boring old cardboard at the moment the plastic palette I normally use is full of oil paint. Oh and this one is a bit of a mess. I am a rather messy person sometimes!
I ended up changing the colour of her shirt cause it just wouldn't be a good representation of me if she wasn't wearing a pink shirt!
Merry Christmas to everyone!
Welcome to the party. Great Palette and Painting! I will be doing a SPOTLIGHT tomorrow (Thursday) and will include your painting and palette. Thanks for linking up. xx
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see you on Palette and Paint :)
ReplyDeleteHappy Holidays.
Very good Ellie:) As I'm not a painter I wasn't sure what you were doing but I get it now. Very cool.
ReplyDeleteIt's looking great so far! I use the Artisan oils (though not on this week's piece) and I think you will love them.
ReplyDeletePS. If you could link to Palette and Paint and Artists in Blogland, others could find their way there. I don't think I know Artists in Blogland.
Thanks everyone! Melisa I thought I had linked it up but I forgot! I've fixed it up now though. Artists in Blogland has "Show & Tell Saturdays" where you post about what you've been working on in the past week.
ReplyDeleteWow! Love it!
ReplyDeleteHappy Holidays!
What a wonderful painting! It looks great!
ReplyDeleteWelcome to Paint Party Friday! It's great to have you join us!!
Hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas, Ellie!
Interesting to see your palette and how you have drawn the paint way out from it's original puddle.
ReplyDeleteI really like the pink shirt. Before it had an overall cool feeling, now a pop of warmth.
I have some acrylic paints by Utrecht, but being an oil painter they feel very"flat" looking to me. I want to be able to mix the colors on the palette, and also have them blend on the painting. How can I make them softer looking?
Hi Gloria,
ReplyDeleteI am just a learner and started out using acrylics, then very recently started with oils so before I started with oils I didn't really know any different. To give the acrylics a little bit of zing, I use acrylic painting medium rather than water as a thinner, which seems to gloss them up a tad, found out totally by accident. This also helps to blend them on the canvas, and a retarder helps to allow wet on wet blending.
As for blending on the painting, I tend to use glazing with the acrylic painting medium and water to re-wet tacky paint to blend, and dry brushing. I tend to make a lot of mistakes and play with results. For example, after putting down the different values for the shading on the face, I use thin warm yellow and warm red drybrushed to give the skin a little life. For the pink shirt, I used magenta blended with a little cool red, then burnt umber to make the dark value and blended on the canvas, then drybrushed white over the lighter values.
I was taught by an artist in a recent class to use burnt umber to soften the colours and take that gaudy brightness out of them. Just a spot to take the edge off.
I love the pink shirt too, it is very 'me' and it pulls the focus forward out of the background.
As I said before, I am just an amateur, having done a few workshops with artists so if anyone else has any suggestions please feel free to post. I also read somwhere that using a tiny bit of complement to tone down colours.
Wow this is awesome! I loved seeing the process, excellent!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for your lovely comments!
ReplyDelete