Anjelina Jolie Action woman!

Anjelina Jolie pencil sketch

This is my third or forth attempt at Angelina. With her lips, it's very easy to make her a caricature, but I thought I should try drawing her straight, for a change!
I was initially indifferent to Angelina Joli. I watched Tomb raider and thought Ho hum! But she's kinda grown on me!

First  when she did Mr and Mrs Smith an action movie with domestic arguments at the height of all the action.

This weekend I watched SALT. And it was a refreshing change to have a female lead who wasn't pouting - scratch that with those lips, it's impossible not to! But you know what I mean, there was enough empasis on the action and her sexuality was played down. It was refreshing. And I loved that the ending was not her finding her Mr. Right.
Suddenly I was impressed with Angelina. There was still some gratuitous nudity at the beginning. Nothing too graphic, and over mercifully quickly. But then for the rest of the film she kept her clothes on!
Action scenes where she took the lead, no cowering in corners whilst her "protector" fought the bad guys! The inner feminist in me was shouting at last, a decent action film meant to appeal to women!! Love it! Sure, it was corny, in a James Bond kind of way, there were plot gaps and inconsistencies. But, hey if you want realism, don't look to Hollywood!!!

The Big Draw

The Big Draw 2010 is in full progress. It started as a national campaign to encourage everyone to draw. Now it’s expanded to an international event throughout October.

I’ve always felt it was a worthy endeavour. The benefits of regular drawing go beyond the acquisition of skill and have a recognisable psychological benefit! It’s more than a co-incidence that Art is used as a therapy.

Which is why last week saw me at an event in the Old Gaol in Buckingham. Sitting around drawing views in the gaol itself and helping visitors with drawing issues.

The options were mostly building interiors, but I was keen to draw some people! Trouble is those available were all moving! For a while I drew the mannequins, before heading for the coffee shop. Several failed sketches later I gave up and went to talk to the artist painting out front. She was painting the gaol using a heavy impasto technique in oils.

She was just finishing and offered to pose. This was the result of the 10-15 minute pose. It’s in charcoal so has the inherent properties of medium i.e. tends to smudge!!!!! Aaaargh! Looking back at it, it has a charm but needed more time.  I still feel self conscious drawing with the subject present. It’s an issue I must overcome, as I tend to rush and “finish” not because I’m worried about drawing, just self conscious about the subject. She has a gypsy look about her, what with the hair band and loop earrings!

Painting has been a bit limited this week. I’ve been completing submission forms. Rowan’s gallery, Beaconsfield art fair, Mooch Gallery in Manchester and Bafa “Inspired by a poem” exhibition. Just delivered my first consignment to Rowan’s gallery, I’ll let you know how it goes!

Next week I’m going to finish a Graham Norton Pose, might be a caricature, or I might do both! You’ll have to wait and see…

Finding time to draw - Portrait of a sleeping baby

Ever wonder where the time goes?
Me Too! I’ve had a week dominated by art promotion and IT development, and even then I’m not happy with the results. So creating art time has been at a premium. Fortunately evening classes mean I usually get something painted each week. I also get to try out new ideas and techniques I might not automatically choose!
Last week it was, my shiny baby in charcoal and chalk.

Sometimes you need to go back to basics and studies help.
With caricatures that means you go back to faces. You need to be able to recreate a face accurately, before you can really play around and make a caricature. Sometimes you need to eliminate colour and focus on shapes and tone. So a return to monochromatic images, seemed in order. Or, in this case, a small bust of a sleeping baby! Or a very shiny baby in this case.
Children and young people are notoriously difficult to get right. Lines age the image, smooth blending and accurate placement are the key!
I love my art classes. I know that whatever happens. At least I’ll be creating something new in the evening!
My other motivator is my sketchbook, and I’ve just signed up for the Sketchbook Project 2011, more details next week.
So, what do you do to motivate you to create art?

Rachel Weisz portrait - The joy of experimenting with new media

Creative people love new toys. Something to inspire and spark off a new idea. Most artist’s I know struggle with hoarding and buy lots of new materials. Drooling when they enter art shops. I’m afraid I’m no different.

About 2 weeks ago I bought some Oil pastels at the Art in Action event. Since then I’ve been mega busy. Finally this week, I’ve managed to use them.

As a novice to oil pastels, I thought I’d experiment to see what I can achieve. I found a great magazine picture of Rachel Weisz in muted arty tones. You know the ones which make your skin look a funny bluish purple. And felt it was time to work on those skin tones! My last effort with pastel resulted in orange peel skin.  I wanted to avoid that this time!

 

I think this one is better! But I might go back to it! Deciding when a picture is finished can be tricky. When working on a piece, I get so engrossed it’s easy to miss glaring faults. These faults usually jump out after a break, although not always immediately. But you also have to know when to stop, when to continue will just ruin it!  And sometimes you discover new effects and working further will destroy the life in the art! You get the picture?

Anyway, this experimenting has started me working on some mixed media paintings. Mainly landscapes so far but I’m rediscovering the joys of mixed media.

I started as a sketch portrait of Siobhan, but she moved after about a minute. So I decided to play, turning it into an abstracty sort of thing. The result looked fun!

A slight Buddist feel to the face, perhaps?

So, this week I’m going to play some more! Another caricature in mixed media, perhaps???

We’ll see!

Portraits and their value to the caricature artist

Although I’m a caricature artist, I’m an artist first and foremost.

Sometimes I think Caricatures are seen as cartoons and there is a general snobbery about cartoons not being “proper art”. I think the barriers are dissolving but anyone who’s ever tried to do a caricature will realise there is more to a caricature. Cartoons simplify, they are based on reality but one which has been distorted to a humorous extent. The more the distortion the greater the comedic value. But the item must be recognisable to allow the humour to work. e.g. a flying telephone wouldn’t be funny if it look like an aeroplane!

The best cartoonists know that the real skill is paring down the drawing process so that every line counts, none is superfluous. I use the example of Peanuts here – Snoopy the dog is the epitome of minimal lines of good  quality.  Another good example is Simon’s Cat

So it is with caricatures. It helps to be able to draw people and achieve a likeness, before the distortion. There is always a trade off between recognition and comic element with a caricature. I’ve always preferred to achieve a good likeness, that’s my style.

Which is why I did a portrait drawing class yesterday. So glad I did. It helps hone skills and experiment with new ideas.

Normally with drawing classes I attend we do warm up exercises to help loosen up styles and get over the initial fear of drawing in front of other people.

We started off with conventional quick sketches like this…

Then we tried a novel exercise of drawing looking at the model…but not the page. Here is the better of my attempts. There’s a bit of a Picasso Feel about the whole thing!

 

What really impressed me about this one was how there is a likeness, even though so many lines are “Wrong”

Next we did tonal drawings in charcoal and chalk. Like so!

Fairly straightforward, reassuring almost.

Finally we did colour mixing in tonal areas – concentrating on shading but not detail. The plan being to complete the details in the afternoon. However, I only did the morning – curses.

My final attempt looks a bit like The Bird’s eye man spent too long on a sunbed before applying mahogany woodstain! I might post him, when he’s finished…

BTW -The model might look familiar as he’s been an extra in quite a few T.V series and films. He mentioned Lewis and The Duchess… amongst many! Not that he was name dropping! But he was very charming.

Realistic sketching with coloured pencils - a portrait of Avril Lavigne

I’ve always admired people who can get a photorealistic finish on pencil sketching. For some time I wondered how it was achieved. Then I discovered burnishing. I knew some blending techniques but hadn’t really attempted burnishing before. (There were some serious gaps in my art education!)
This is my second serious attempt at intensive blending, Avril Lavigne. The blending and colours seem to be working well.

With any artwork I always find it best to “sit on it” for a while. Looking at a picture after a break helps you see the flaws. The errors are glaringly obvious.
Take Avril here, I thought I was finished until I scanned the picture in. But now I can see where I need some minor adjustments. But I’ll do that tomorrow I think, then add the picture with changes.
I can also see that I need to clean my scanner bed, there are marks on her chin which aren’t on the original! Ugh housework! (phtew)

More Barack Obama, this time a pencil sketch

I started the day determined to be far more productive than yesterday, a good night’s sleep always helps. The morning was so so but by the afternoon I was back on track. I used some self-levelling gel on my canvas abstract and spent ages using acrylic inks and a cocktail stick creating a lovely pattern in yellow, gold, silver, orange and red. As I was able to apply some texture to another area without touching the gel I decided to crack on. Everything was beginning to come together and I decided to take the colour over the edge of the canvas. That would have been fine had I not tilted the canvas to a 45 degree angle. I realised what I’d done quickly enough to prevent the entire gel ending up on the table, but not before the pattern had morphed into something else. I tweaked it as best I could but it’s not what it was, sigh. Note to self engage brain before and during painting. On arriving home Ewan couldn’t resist touching it so it now has added texture. Such a helpful boy!!!

Whilst waiting for Ewan to finish his swimming lesson, I managed a sketch of Barack Obama. It took slightly less than an hour. The skin tones are better than my last attempt so overall I’m a happy bunny.

This evening was life drawing class. My quick studies were much better than the detailed one today. Coincidentally I heard an interesting debate on Premier Christian radio about whether Christians should do life drawing. I’d never thought of it as an issue, but for some it apparently is! The topic came up this evening because the art school is moving to using a church hall and they want to continue to offer life drawing, but need to check permissions before they can make arrangements.

We have normality - a return to Heath Ledger

The children are all back at school, the snow is thawing, I’ve done a couple of quick sketches… finally some normality!

This is a sketch of Heath Ledger – it’s crude and I always feel I can do better but I’ve managed an essence of Heath I think!

I often have warring urges when drawing. My dilemma can be summed up by a story I read some years ago. A Pottery teacher divides her class into two group. The first set is told they only need to make one pot and will be graded on its quality. The other set is told that they must make as many pots as possible and will be graded only by the number of pots they make, whatever the quality.

The “Quality” set spend hours deliberating on what constitutes the best pot and ultimately produce a nice pot but it’s nothing special. The”Quantity” group spend hours industriously producing pots. Their early attempts are pretty pathetic but as time progresses the quality of the pots improves so that the end pots are equally good, if not better in quality, than the one produced by “Quality” group. Part of me naturally identifies with the “Quality” group. However, I’m trying to get my head around the fact that the best way to get quality is to produce in significant quantity.

David Bowie

I decided it was about time I tried David Bowie. Initial picture searches threw up lots of early Bowie examples, so I thought why not. He always was pretty easy on the eye when he was younger, even though he's aged quite well. I drew the line at Aladin Sane and the other face painted creations though - names escape me at the moment. So here he is.

Debbie Harry revisited

I seem to have lost the plot recently. I think it's pre Christmas stress, or something to do with far too many school activities and Christmas shopping. Anyway, I did this sketch of Debbie Harry the other day, last week, from a picture I found online. It was meant to be the start of an attempt at a quick sketch a day... that didn't happen. Looks at toes in the uncomfortable way you do when you haven't done your homework and the teacher wants to know why.
I didn't get any work accepted by the Royal Society of British Artist. Need to keep pluggin away at that.
I know have a picture on display in Body Matters in Well Street in Buckingham. It's not in the best place- the toilet- but at least it will be seen. There has to be some Freudian comment there but I'm not going to denegate my artwork (Trying to exercise some positive thinking here) so you'll have to fill in the blank....
I've been working on some abstracts. Christmas has taken over otherwise, carol services, we have snow...only an inch, but it's snow!

Michael Jackson, portrait

This is the second attempt at a pencil portrait of Michael. The first was a good likeness but I'd not placed him correctly. This one is much better.

I've been a bit distracted the last few days, I'm doing a Christmas craft fair later on today. Generally selling any artwork I can, but I'm also going to try some live caricaturing again. I'm not sure how it will go, but I won't know until I've tried, will I? So, I must off and carry on preparing.

What's this?

I've been neglecting blogging for the past few days. I have been creating artworks though, so not a total loss of direction. I'm adopting a very lazy posture though. After sparaining my foot last Friday and overdoing walking around I thought I should keep it raised as much as possible, and I haven't worked out a good way to do that at the computer.
So to pictures, I've just done another quick one of Michaael Jackson, not really happy with it so might redraw and post next picture. So here's another exhibition entry, no idea which picture was commended yet, hopefully will find out soon.
It's called "What's this?"

Exhibition entry

Well, it's been an interesting few days, from a logistical point of view, anyway. I finished off the artwork for the exhibition. Loaded it up into the car. I was just returning to the house to pick up the last few bits when I twisted my foot, spraining it. After some frantic phonecalls I was able to get my artwork to the exhibition and have been ferried around by Andrew and various friends to do my stewarding duties. Sadly I'll be missing the best of show presentations at the end. Not that I'm expecting to win, which I won't. Another year with no recognition (sigh -must try harder next year) but I liked most of the winners this year - except one of a tiger, the highly commended was better, in my opinion. (And, no, it wasn't mine!)

This is one of mine titled "1 in 10,000,000+ Reflections on a life lost" Slight technical problems, the acrylic medium hasn't cured properly yet and one of the sheets has move. Apart from that I'm pleased how well it turned out and that the images lined up correctly when viewed from the front!
The image is of my Great Uncle Albert who went missing in action on 8th June 1918. The layers represent
White = spirit and soul
Red = bloodshed
Brown = mud and the dirtiness of war
Black = death both actual death but also death of possibility and potential.
The images show aging at the front, something he will never do.

Who is she?

I did this picture last month I was aiming for a loose ink drawing which I think I've achieved. Only trouble is, I can't remember who she is? Not very familiar with the face but I think I was pleased with he likeness. It might be Avril Lavigne but...? I'll add the name when/if I remember.

Today has been dominated with household and family activities. Specifically persuading an extremely reluctant 4 year old that he really can start wearing pants and using the toilet! (And catching up with the laundry.) Oh, the giddy heights of excitement that is my life! Only 2 1/2 weeks until he starts school and he really needs to be out of nappies. A combination of shiny gold stars for a star chart and a lemon shaped timer seem to finally persuade him! Still, it was a 2 star day so we might have overcome the biggest hurdle.

Duchess of York

This sketch was done from the cover of the telegraph magazine. I was quite pleased with it earlier on but now I think it needs more work. The essential likeness is there but the shading's wrong. I often find when I return to pictures, I see things that don't look right. I might get around to tweaking it tonight and I'll place the picture below.

I need to start work on a commission now - caricature for a 40th birthday.

Finished doggy pic

This is the picture I've been working it. I think it's finished but I'm waiting on the client's approval. I've already altered it once as the dog is very shy and won't keep her ears up when photographed. So the ears are 80% guesswork but apparently correct.

Drew Barrymore portrait

Well, I did the car boot. I sold one card... to Andrew. Not what you'd call a staggering commercial success! (Did you see what I did there? Sarcasm, it might be the lowest form of wit but it makes me feel better.) I did give out business cards and a few people did seem genuinely and not just politely taking the cards in order not to offend my 8 year old assistant. Andrew also pointed out that at £8 a pitch it was cheap advertising. Only time will tell if it was worth it. It was a usefull exercise in ironing out problems such as how to display my cards and I need to find a better way of showing the paintings. I really need to look at craft fairs though. Most people at car boots are not looking for fine art, unless it's seeking a bargain to show at the "Antiques Roadshow"
Not that I'm a cynic you understand.

So, onto todays post. This one's another attempt to get Drew Barrymore, but a portrait this time. I'm still not 100% happy with the left eye, when am I ever but her eyebrow really was that bushy compared to the left, probably just an optical illusion caused by the shadows.
I also had some other ideas following the car boot. I haven't done a Bond yet and loads of people asked for Michael Jackson, so when I've got some printer ink, I'll try him. I can't decide what era though, probably the Thriller/Off the Wall period.

Abstract complete

Well, here it is "Revealed" this is the abstract I've been working on for so long. I'm about 99% happy with it but still wondering about the colour of the cord. There is a hint of a portrait in there and even a hand, if you look closely. I decided to keep the big head shape more abstract. The original plan was to include eye detail but I liked the contrast and still think it doesn't need anymore. The hair was fun but I need to improve my icing bag skills...

Elvis is in the picture!

I decided to try Elvis again tonight. As usual now I've uploaded it I've spotted something I need to touch up but I think it can wait until until morning and natural light. His left eye needs to be darker and the picture needs cropping. I've spent most of today on Domestic activities - mainly the garden. I can now sit outside and draw without thinking of all the things that need doing. Just wondering how soon it will be before the dog digs more holes and undoes all the hard work.

Boy on a roof - retouched.

OK, so you've seen this picture before, but I have altered it slightly, honest, mainly around the eyes. I decided to post the finished version as the rest of my working time has been spent on a commission. I've reached the stage where I can start painting, but I need to check the client is happy before I start that, I think she should be, I am.

More good news, I've been commissioned to do an animal picture in acrylic. Just waiting for the pictures then I can get started...