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

A little bird told me

A little bird told me

Mixed media on canvas
8x8 inches

Another small painting, inspired by the noisy bird in the garden! It was so loud and once you'd picked up on the sound it got in your head and couldn't shut it out!

I used personal collage elements as the base of the painting and then embellished with acrylics, inks and texture gels. In this one I added a printed element also.

Hope you like it


Also I became a member of the Pastel Guild of Europe this week. This group's aim is to promote the use and interest of pastel painting as a fine art media. I regularly use pastels for my life drawing/painting group as its ideal for quickly getting an image and colour down on paper- this is really essential when working directly from life as even the best model will move. I'll certainly be doing more pastels as a result, and hopefully pushing myself to do other things like landscapes (I've not done a pure landscape in ages!). I'll try to keep updates coming!

Ryan


Ryan

Colour studies

Well I'm using my scientist brain to improve my artist brain!

Up until now I guess I've been buying paint tubes based on their shiny-ness, because other artists metion they use them, or whether they're on offer(!).

Well no more!!

I'm using my natural scientific brain (at last the day job comes in useful for more than the bills!)

I'm studying Suzanne Brooker's 'Portrait painting atelier' a lovely book I got for Christmas. So far I've been drooling over the masterful painting examples biding my time until I had more time to devote to artistic study (as opposed to the scientific type!). Also I've got a new digital camera (since the last broke I've been limited to what I can post)

Essentially the first exercise involves exploring the pigments on the pallete and learning control over the mixing capability of each colour.

Here's the first two using core earth red pigments and then contempory red pigments. For each I painted the the hue (colour out the tube) then experimented with tines, tints, shades, warm, cool and neutral mixes of each colour.





Doing this not only allows me to improve my colour mixing control and skill, but also allows me to directly compare different paint hues and variations between manufacturers.

I found these difficult as I have a red/green colour blind deficiency so mixing the neutrals caused me a bit of consternation (as I had to mix green into my reds to neutralise the colour)

Next up is the oranges and remaining earth colours!

Ryan