At your peril …

Oh, good! Vacancies. I’m sure this will be a nice place to stay … or not.

Long time, no Tando! Di needed some samples at short-ish notice for a Create and Craft TV show. She sent me the large standing door kit. Tando kits are made from sturdy grey board and will take whatever decorative treatment you put on it – so your imagination can run wild! I even hacked the step with a craft knife to create a crack.

Other members of the design team used papers and inks, I used paint – what else!

I decided that a spooky, horror hotel would be fun, so here is The Phantom’s Inn.
The bricks are base coated in black, then dry brushed with colours to make them look like old stone. The arch, pillars, and steps are marbled – a faux effect to look like real marble. I dirtied it with a wash of Burnt Umber. A couple of old beer cans decorate the steps. The frosted glass of the doors show the hands of a customer who has decided not to stay – but the doors seem to be held shut with a brick. If we open the door we see the phantom looming along the passage.

It was finished and posted in good time and was proudly displayed, centre stage, for the show, alongside all the other design team samples. Let’s hope Tando sold loads.

Check out Tando’s web site for all the super goodies available.

https://www.tando-creative.co.uk/

What on earth … ?

This 1950s garden sprayer sits in the corner, mostly ignored and unnoticed, but I needed a subject with reflections and highlights for a still-life experiment.

So this pulveriseur à haute pression gets centre stage in this small, acrylic on canvas painting. With reflections they say, ‘just paint what you see’. So I did and this is the result, so far.

I have more to do – there is another item, or peut etre, deux, to add to the picture, so it may re-appear in a future post.

More sketchbooking

I’ve had a bit of a run on the sketchbook, there were no other requests pending so it has been a good time to experiment and do some drawings for myself.

In the last Sketchbooking post I showed the tulip and bee, and the peony. One stippling, one hatching. This time there are another two completely different ideas.

First I tried an architectural scroll, sometimes likened to acanthus leaves, from classical designs. I stippled the background shading, but wanted to try hatching lines for the contours. I wasn’t sure if the two techniques would work together, but I was pleased with the overall effect. What do you think?

The second is a rose. This time I thought the subject needed a softer look, so it was back to stippling all the way. The paper of the sketchbook is not the best quality and consequently the stippling was not as sharp as it could be, so I outlined the rose for better definition.

As the rose was quite life-like I added leaves in as natural looking way as I could. This was an interesting exercise as I was working from memory. Again, I am satisfied with the finished piece – but want to try a similar picture with hatching lines.

I will put away the sketchbook for a while as I have to attend to other projects, but I have enjoyed the experience and found it useful. So these won’t be the last sketches, watch this space.

Arachnophobia

This is the first Tando project for a while, so it had to be a bit different.

The base is an ATC (Artist Trading Card) Matchbox with cards, a new line in Tando’s greyboard collection. I used a ‘spooky woods’ background to a spider on a web thread as the main theme.

The spooky woods were created with glazes of acrylic paint, blue, grey, black, getting darker and more dense as they get closer to the viewer. Light rays from the distant source were dry brushed with a pale blue.

The large dangling spider is from Tando in their Spider Minis set. He was painted black with slight highlights. And spooky ‘Arachnophobia’ in pale blue.

The border is two corners of a Tando frame, painted gold.

Spooky woods – sans araignée

Sketchbooking

I’ve been doing ‘stuff’ in my sketchbook! I never really bothered with sketchbooks, I thought of them as a bit of a waste of time, but actually, it has been useful.

I go to a group meeting, the Tuesday Craft Collective, a bunch of arty villagers getting together for tea, biscuits, chat – and someting arty-crafty. All very pleasant and simple. As I usually draw or paint I needed something easy to transport – the sketchbook and a handful of pens and pencils. Ideal!

I started by stippling a tulip, which I coloured with pencils, then I added a bee, just for fun.

Next up, I wanted to try hatching/crosshatching. It is a fascinating technique with a long history, but no longer popular. I drew a peony, and I am pleased with the result.

Using the sketchbook is a way of practising techniques without the pressure of completing a finished piece.

More to come …

Rock, cat, cat rock

Sometimes I get some unusual requests. This time it was to turn a 320 million-ish year old carboniferous sandstone boulder into a cat. Derren Brown, eat your heart out! Although, in reality, no illusions or mindgames were harmed in this transformation.

It isn’t something I’d tried before. I had seen similar paintings and admired the handywork of the artists who created them, so I knew it could be done.

Dawn, who requested the cat, asked if it could look like her late ginger, ‘Marmy’, so that set the colour scheme. First I washed the stone and gave it a day or so to completely dry. Next a coat of gesso, and a base coat of Burnt Orange.

It took a while to get the features marked out in pencil, then I tried to apply colour. Ordinary painting with acrylic and brush wasn’t working for me, and I eventually completed the design with coloured pencils (mainly Karismacolor and Polychromos).
The hard and abrasive surface, even after base coating, was not kind to my pencils and I spent a lot of time keeping the points sharp.

I finished with a spray fixative to hold the colour, then sealed with DecoArt ‘Soft Touch’ varnish.

So, another learning experience, turning rocks into cats, using only pencils. Could this be the oldest cat ever discovered? What name would you give him … Sylvester (Rocky Stallone)? Dwayne (‘The Rock’ Johnson)?

‘The Rock’ with a thin coat of gesso.

Vintage Oil Lamp

This one was a bit of a dotty challenge. I love the look of old oil lamps and we have a few about the cottage, so I thought I’d give it a go. I used various marks for shading, some hatching, some stippling, and I achieved a pleasing result.

The glass was difficult as I needed to make it lighter than the brasswork with the impression of transarency. And the shadows of the glass were interesting.

Let me know what you think.

The Garden House

This view is from the old tennis court, looking up towards the house surrounded by shrubs and trees. Drawn with fine liners and coloured with Polychromos pencils.

The Garden House is near Yelverton, Devon, and its 10 acres of garden is open to the public.

Hatching still life

I’ve started a large still life with acrylic on canvas, it consists a metronome, a bottle of pastis, an overturned glass over a blue draped cloth. Trouble is that, like with many projects I get sidetracked with other ideas. This time I wanted to try the picture in pen and use hatching, so I put aside the brushes and paints and got out the pens.

This is the result of the experiment. I didn’t know where the end product would go. I tried to match the hatching with each area in real life. I don’t think it’s too bad considering I usually use stippling for shade.

Things I would do differently include:

The shading on the dark side of the metronome. Next time I would hatch in a direction that would suggest the vertical.
Shading/brightness on the glass need better effect. Must work on that.
Background needs work.

Let me know what you think.

Special Wedding Card

Our son’s wedding was a unique affair, with skulls, the bride’s black dress, and a bayonet to cut the cake, so something unusual was needed for their card.

So, a deer skull in dots on the outside and the family cats on the inside …