Brooklyn blues, new mixed media painting

Happy 2013!

I'm back from a bit of a Blogger break, can't believe its been so long since my last post.

Anyway here is the finished mixed media painting that my last post showed the start of:

Brooklyn Blues

Mixed Media on canvas

80x60cm

There was a fair bit of collage and layering of textures to get to this point.  There's lots of subtle relevant inclusions as well that hopefully will mean there's a lot of looking longevity!  My research on New York style building made me realise I'd picked architecture with LOTS of windows, phew!

 This painting now has a new home in my brother's music room and thankfully he was really happy with the way it turned out

Ryan

New Commission- work in progress

This is what I'm working on at the moment. A new mixed media painting with a musical theme. This is for my brother's music studio so music is an obvious theme. Continuing my current love for quirky buildings and rooftops I thought it would be cool to do a New York themed rooftop jazz / blues band.


Early sketches and ideas

Prepping the canvas

Used collage and various texture pastes to build this up


Transferring the sketch and incorporating some of the random collage and texture shapes

THe silver leaf really picks up the flash! hoping this will help with the glittering city in the distance

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