Picture a Week

A quicky this week – two lunch hours. Joe Francis Dowden, your a god amonst watercolour artists. Easy to follow, easy to understand. This is one of his projects from his book Painting Water.

“I am the LAW”. I love Judge Dredd, although the earlier work is a little ropey, thedepiction in later yearsof the character give you a real gritty, chip on the shoulder as wide asa mile feeling.This picture is taken from the new film Dredd, where I find Karl Urban does a fine job of grimacing thought nearly every shot. I had my choice of painting down to three scenes in the movie; a side shot in the light, a point where he is standing infront of the new American flag (which was going to be titled “True American Hero”) and this one. For those who want to recognise the point in the movie, it’s in the last scene in the penthouse.

Note to self. Avoid painting pictures with lots and lots and lots of black in them. As usual, click on the picture for a closeup detailed view.

Mixing two of my favourite subjects, motorbikes and naked women, and I liking for those 70’s wacka chacka chow style pictures, lead me to this picture.

Although there is a bit of flesh on display it is safe for work – no nipples or other ‘parts’ are on display.

Here is, was week eight but is now week nines picture of the week. A lot more tricky than expected, and not as good as I would have liked.

So why is this appearing in March, instead of in February when week eight is supposed to fall. WellI got a bit poorly sick. A lot poorly sick and I didn’t get chance to paint at all that week. I got a sketch done but that was about it.

To make up for it though – I painted two pictures this week and finished them in reverse order. So here I am proud to present Week 8.

Where is week seven ? Well it’s been done – it was done last week in fact! It’sa commission/present for someone and I’m waiting for them to get it through the post. Once that’s done I’ll update this message and add the picture!

Edit Update – well it’s here at last. This one was a commission for a gift.

I’ve been looking to paint this picture for nearly a year now. Ever since accidently stumbling on to the music video to Bad Romance, this particular sequence of shots of Lady Gaga has facinated me. With a more time this week, the initial sketch was drawn on Monday. Had a lunch out on Tuesday. Base blue colour work on Wednesday and Final colours Thursday. Good job realy as I’m off tomorrow!

I’d say around 3 1/2 hrs work.

Enjoy! (As usual click on the image for a full screen).

This is what happens when you leave things to the last minute. I’ve not been well (poor me) and didn’t have much thought to what I was going to paint this week. So I plumped for one of the landscapes in my Watercolour Landscapes photo book and half hearted painted it.

This is not one of my favourites, but it is one of fifty two.

Ha, I was so wrong. It did snow. It’s not lasting long but we did get snow. This means two things. One. Coming to work on a motorbike during snow is entertaining and two I’ve not been able to bring my A2 size block of paper back to work. Thus the planned picture for this week has been put on hold.

Instead I’m going to do a more experimental picture from one of my many art books (Watercolor for the fun of it). It’s more experimental due to it being mainly bleeding washes – something I don’t do as a sytle very often as I prefere more detailed work than letting colours blend. However colour running is one of the many benefits of using watercolours – a fact I can hardly ignore.

This is a no pencil work picture – don’t realy need any to be honest. I’ve also not used any masking fluid – just left the gaps where I need white. Blended the majority of the picture on Monday and finshed it off today.

It’s a little different than my other works, but I actually quite like it.

What I don’t like is the paper – its a Daler Rowney “pre-stretched” paper that’s glued on 4 sides. I say “pre-stretched” in quotes as it’s clearly not streatched or it’s not stretched properly. As soon as you soak the paper it ripples and rises. When it dries the glued edges bring it all back flat.When you stretch paper, you soak it then gluethe edges to a board when it’s wet.As itdries out it stretches the paper fibre. When youfully soak it again it returns to the soak position without rippling or rising, giving you a real nice flatsurface to run the paint around. This stuff is not pre-stretched. Looks like I’ll have to hunt out myglue tape.

So the country is covered in snow… except here. In fact 99% of the time this country gets snowed on, Liverpool is clear. This weeks picture is a snow scene as I’m unlikely to get any real snow. I’ve also gone for a limited palette, just Alizan Crimson, Ultramarine and Black. So depending on your quirky nature its either a two colour palette and black or a three colour palette. The original picture was off the theweek website titled snow-scotland-121203 (as I don’t have any snow here to draw from).

Drawn in one lunch time with the very pale pink wash on the back. Rest completed on Tuesday. Today was some tiny touch up detail work (which no one will ever notice but me).

This is more a distance picture. Either shrink it down or step well back to get the best effect.

Complete. Not much extra to be done, some tidy up around the eyes and face. Extra jacket work and hey presto, other one churned out.Click on the picture for a full size view.Fifty to go…