Course Project 3

Project 3 WIP (Acrylic on canvas)

I'm really enjoying this online course run by Este Macleod, because it has certainly thrown me out of my comfort zone and I find myself producing pictures which I couldn't predict before I started. 

This latest is being developed from a canvas prepared with several layers of mark-marking, following Este's guidelines:

Still on Course

Project 1 has moved along and changed over the week. The fruit have disappeared and been replaced by a key and the flowers have become better defined. Not too much more to do on this one.

Course Project

Project 1 Day 1 
(Acrylic on canvas) 

The day began with panic at having to abandon all control and simply follow the instructions. My initial reaction was, this is never going to work. But fairly soon after, things began to pull together and reached a point where I was rather pleased with the look of the thing. 

Of course, I've gone beyond that now and am at the point of wondering how it will ever really come together.

Under advice from Este (who insists she would never finish a painting in a day), I'm putting it to one side until tomorrow.

On Course

I think I mentioned when beginning work on my wooden heart, that I'd signed up for an online painting course. It's with Este MacLeod and it started this week. Este's paintings are nothing like mine; her background is in textiles, she paints in an abstract manner and she uses acrylics, on this course Golden Fluid Acrylics. All of which I thought would throw me out of my comfort zone and maybe give me a push in a different direction.

It already feels like it's working. There's that old feeling of finding water unpredictable and uncontrollable and relief to find that she uses mostly acrylic medium to thin her paint. But not knowing, and finding out how paint and colour will behave is a getting-back-to-basics strategy and is truly fascinating.

At the top of this post is one of the colour exercises and here's a couple of pages of fanciful flowers put together, quite quickly, from deconstructed fruit and veg.

More as things unfold.

Sketch Crawl #3 : Tynemouth

Collingwood Cannon, Tynemouth
(Pitt markers, Japanese brush pens in A4 sketchbook)

It looked grey and cold on Saturday morning and even though the forecast showed some sunshine at the Coast I decided on wearing a fleece. Boy, was I glad I did when I got to Tynemouth for my third sketch crawl. It was one of those sunny days where the constant wind makes it bitterly cold.

I'd made some error in my travelling calculations and got to Tynemouth Metro Station about half an hour later than I'd planned, so everyone was busy with their sketching and I had to hunt them out. Not an easy job, because I'd completely forgotten that on Saturday there's a market held in the station and the place was heaving:

It was somewhat overwhelming and rather than try to sort out something to draw, I made a quick tour of the station, photographing my fellow sketch crawlers for posterity:

Allan                                    Barbara

Katie



Michael

Richard

With something like fifteen minutes to spare before we moved off, I took out my A5 sketchbook and stood on the pedestrian bridge, having a go at capturing some of the people milling about below. No one - even the man who'd been standing stock still at his stall and who'd therefore encouraged me to try this - remained in one place or position for more than thirty seconds. I'd look up and the person I'd started to draw had morphed into someone else, so the old woman with the anorak exchanged her trousers for a long skirt. No men suffered this indignity, but another woman found the dog she'd been leading on a bit of string had turned into a rabbit.

Tynemouth Market people
(Pitt medium marker in A5 sketchbook)

After that it was off into town to find somewhere to draw that didn't involve being blown away. Pretty impossible, as I discovered when I tried to find shelter in a valley near the Collingwood Monument. Finally accepting that the wind would blow wherever I stood, I took up position on the steps of the Monument and drew part of one of the cannons (see above).

Although there was about half an hour left of the allotted drawing time, I headed back up the hill to Front Street and hung about outside Mr Woods coffee shop, waiting for the others to turn up. After a while I was joined by Barbara and we talked for a while in the partial shelter of a lamp post. After a further while, Michael came out of the coffee shop and apologised for having gone in soon along with the others. We joined them for a muffin and a coffee.

As well as passing round the day's accomplishments, we talked about how the summer (ha!) seemed to be coming to an end and we might have to find indoor locations for our sketch crawls. As it has previously, the possibility of sketching in Newcastle's Hancock Museum came up. We'll see ...