Picture a Week

Bit of an experiment this week. Whenever I paint portraits I outline areas of colour. Before I apply any paint the picture looks like a complicated paint by numbers but without the numbers.

So this week I’ve painted a "paint by numbers" without the numbers. That is I’ve blocked in some areas and purposely applied flat washes of the same colours to different parts of the picture. In fact I"ve used eleven colours in all, and because they are water colours and near impossible to mix to the same colour again, I painted each "˜number" at the same time and all in one sitting.

Stand back (or shrink the picture) to get the best effect. I quite like it and might paint a few more piccies through the year in the same style.

Trumpets blaring, drums banging, swords clashing. Raaar! “To Battle, To Battle”.

A commission this week, suggested by one of my good friends James Jones, of one of my good feinds James Jones (and yes I have spelt that correct).

So I watched Coraline for the first time the other day. Of course that night I then dreamt of a beautiful women, wearing a blue silk dress, with neon blue hair sitting next to me at the theatre. She didn’t say anything too me, just sat very close with our legs lightly touching. Being a dream it wasn’t really a theatre and more like a long table we were sitting at, and the show wasn’t in front of us, but to the side. After a while she moved away, I watched some more of the theatre then looked down the table three seats in her direction. She was sitting there, signing (as in sign language) to thin air. It was at that moment I realised she was deaf and that was why she hadn’t said anything.

I moved down to sit next to her, holding my hand up I whispered “Hi”. She then signed that she knew my Grandad and had often had conversations with him across this table in sign language (all of which I also heard as a whisper). She then told me that because she knew my Grandad that she loved me and we kissed.

I then woke up before I could get any of her clothes off, but that is the nature of dreams 😀

Anyhow, I took it as a sign of what to paint next and after a while kind of realised that the girl in my dreams was very much like Katie Fey (aka Eugenia Diordiychuk). So I painted a picture of a girl with bright blue hair.

“Katie Fey” IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. If your searching for reference pictures BE WARNED – do it in the privacy of your own home, with the curtains drawn.

However my picture is safe.

Hmm. What can I say. Didn’t fancy thinking this week so I decided to follow one of the painting guides from one of my many books. Of course it was only once I started the painting I realised I was following one of the authors who jumps from “placea flat wash on the forground” to “and add some detail” with no inbetween. So like I’ve placed a flat wash and now your saying “finish the painting”.

So I spent more time thinking and interpreating the advice then I do when I paint from scratch. Ahh well. Up until about half an hour to finish it looked rather pants. Then, like most times, it fell into place.

So I’ve been playing a lot of Batman Arkham City. This week I was going to go back to old school, that is my old school. As a youngester I used to paint in arcylics inked in drawings. It was quick, fun and looked cool, kind of like a comic book cell shaded effect. Anyhow while looking for cool Batman poses to colour in, I came across another character – Harley Quinn. I like the updated look of Harley in Arkham city (and I can’t stand the old checkerboard outfit).

So I though hey – lets give Harley six inches. Six inches of canvas that is, she’s painted on an almost miniture scale of 6 inch by 4 inch.

So watch ya waiting for, you wanna Rev up ya Harley dontcha ?

I was watching one of his programs the other day (Derren Brown) when I suddenly though – Hey! Let’s paint him! I do like his trickery, subtlety and deviousness and his general openness about tricking you. There are several times you think, is this a trick, or is he tricking the watcher with well-placed camera work. In either case, the idea of his program is to ultimately entertain and ‘trick’ the watcher. How he does it is part of the magic.

Anyhow it’s not as good as his own painting, but a fair watercolour for 4 lunch times work.

“Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise…and the earth shall cast out the dead.”

It’s about time, with my morbid fear of zombies, that I painted a zombie picture. Slightly tame in terms of blood and guts “horror”, but I can guarantee this will not be my only zombie adventure.

For those who aren’t as fascinated with the walking dead as much as I, this picture is taken from the signature shot for George A. Romero, Night of the Living Dead.

Monochrome painting this time, all painted with Winsor & Newton Artist Level Prussian Blue, darkened at times with some Lamp Black (well technically it’s two colours used 😀 )

As to the title, you’ll want to google Isaiah 26:19-21.

I started this one late in the week and didn’t have much enjoyment with it throughout that week. In fact at one point I did consider if I should paint a different picture compleatly. Neither the water was coming together, nor the spatter effect on the tree lines. Then on Friday when I was about to pack it all in and removed the masking tape, it looked kind of ok. So rather than rush it, I left it over the weekend and finished the final details. It’s not too bad.

Thanks Sue for the suggestion of Something Warm for this weeks painting.

Where on a road to somewhere come on inside – or something like that :P. Another one from the excellent weather book, but not quite what I originally planned. This picture in the book had this dark and moody storm cloud formation rolling in. When I started painting the sky though, I was half way through layering these storm clouds when bam, I had a superb part clear, part storm effect which I kind of liked. So I stuck with it.

Hope you enjoy,

As promised a landscape. I bought a corker of a book called “Weather World”, from the Works, for a grand total of £1.99. This is based on one of the lightning strike photographs over Budapest in Hungary. And yes, the sky was that brilliant purple colour.

The books a definate inspiration, so expect a few more landscapes based from here over the year.