Picture a Week

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…

I sneaked a little jacket work in last night before going home. I realised that I’m not going to be in on Friday so realistically need to finish this picture by Thursday!

Today though I’ve detailed the hair, eyes, glasses and a bit of wierdy beardy. Gotta laught seeing as I’ve got a face full of it myself.

Had to force myself to get on with it today. I know once I get started I realy enjoy it, but like most things getting that motivation to start is sometimes the hardest part.

Dotted some liquid latex on the areas I want to keep bright white, and a few places where I’ll blend in a lighter colour smack bang inside a darker one.

He’s looking a bit blue and orange today, but these are the base shading coats for his face (today I’m starting with the shadows in blue) and his coat (starting with the highlights in orange).

This is my first beared. Think I might need a little luck with that!

So as promised, this week is a picture of Jonathan Coulton (the inspiration of painting fifty two pictures this year). I had a quick smurf of the tinterwebs and found a picture of him not on stage, looking rather casual. I liked the pose and lighting so have gone with a zoomed in portrait from this pic.

So it’s Monday and the sketch is done. For portraits I like to follow the techniques from a cool book I think was called “Watercolour People”. That means my sketch is full of small areas of tone, and looks a little bit like a paint by numbers kit!

Anyhow, here is progress for day one.

So week one has commenced, and finished. I said I needed to do a quick one and here it is. The start of a very long year I feel.

In order to keep this one quick the subject matter has come straight from one of my (many) Art Books on water colour techniques (better attribute it – Readers Digest How to Paint Watercolour Landscapes, photographs by Joe Cornish, Written by Hazel Harrison).
I also chose a 6 inch by 4 inch (15cm x 10cm) water colour paper. It’s the last small sheet in my box so I rubbed the sketch that was on it out and started fresh. It’s a Windsor & Newton postcard paper and there is a spot on the back for an address and stamp! I don’t think I’ll be sending these through the post though, not with our wet weather.

Started at 12 noon and was finished by 1.30pm so an hour and half for this week, and I’m happy with the choice.

Enjoy!

Full image:

With ruler for size:

Framed:

I’m changing the blog. Now I’m getting old and inspired by Mr Jonathan Coulton, I’m going to paint one picture a week in my lunch hour. I’m then going to post it on here, with a creative commons licences.

If it does nothing more than add 52 pictures to my growing collection then so be it. Who knows though, someone might actually like them.

I was going to start with a painting of the inspiring man himself (Mr Coulton) but this is a half week for me as, well, it’s New Years Day and the weeks most of the way over. He’ll come next, and I’ll start this week off with something quick and easy.

Be warned, I’m fond of barely dressed ladies (I went to an all boys school, which has a lot to blame for), so expect at least one of the 52 to be Not Safe For Work.

Lets see how far I get.