A moment of pure bliss

A moment of pure bliss

mixed media of canvas
8x8 inches

This was a really fun painting to do. Lots of gold bling in there makes it very decorative, Klimt wouuld be pleased!

There is collage elements that are then painted over with acrylics, inks and oil pastels.

Ryan

Classical style drawings

Have been continuing to practice my clssical drawing techniques, here's some recent examples:

This one is from life and took about 1hr 15mins. It utilises grey paper, graphite and heightened by white chalk. There no smudging, only directional hatching to indicate form. This is a technique favoured by many of the old masters.

This one was done yesterday at the National Galleries of Scotland. There was an 'Easel Sketching in the Gallery' event that I took part in. Basically there was a model and easels set-up for volunteers to draw. Took about 20mins, but was tough because there was quite a crowd (about 30-40) bustling around watching you work!! It uses willow charcoal and white chalk on a warm grey paper. Reasonably happy with my effort considering I wasn't warmed up and was under pressure!

Finally I went to the back stair of the gallery where there are many classical Roman busts (Mix of marble and plaster casts). Picked this one to do a sketch off in my journal, using just a new mechanical pencil (HB) I bought. I really liked the fact that this pencil was always sharp! There was quite an audience again as visitors walked past, many stopped to see what I was doing and asked a few quesions. Quite a challenging afternoon!

Ryan

A night on the tiles

A night on the tiles

Here's a sketch of the next painting for my new mixed media style that's developing. The sketch is literally a thumnail 3.5 x 3.5 inches. It's enough to give me an idea of what the finished piece might look like.

For the sketch I use Staedler pigment liners to draw the image, this one worked first time luckily but then I have drawn my cat Baggio lots of times! By using ink, you can't erase any mistakes so makes you just go for it (its only a sketch!). Once I have the drawing down, I use Caran D'Ache Neocolor II watersoluble wax pastels to add colour. The best thing with these is they have high pigment ratio and when you get a brush with water, you get a lovely wash of pure colour to quickly indicate the colour strategy. It's still transparent so you can see the ink still too.

With this there's not much I wanted to change other than the angles of the buidings. So I got started with the painting. I start with collage to make the basic shapes and add texture. I sketch in black ink the image using the wooden end of a brush and a square cut-out of cardboard (this stops me being fussy and detailed- adds character to the drawing as its a bit wonky). Colour and paint are then built up in layers with extra colloage here and there. The cat is made up mainly of collaged newspaper!

A night on the tiles
Mixed media on board
15x15 inches

Ryan