Earth Mother

Medium: Soft Pastels
Paper: A2 Lightly Textured 180 gsm paper
Duration: 3-4 hours

This is a fairly quick soft pastel sketch I drew in tribute to that great western artist Howard Terpning. I’ve always loved his portraits of life in the wild west and especially how he used the native peoples of North America as his subjects.

Charcoal practice - child

This is a practice charcoal I did in my art class I teach, for the reference I used an image I saw on Facebook awhile back, can't remember who posted it! Just loved the colour version in watercolour, and wanted to try it in charcoal. This is the result. Size A2 Duration 2 hours.

WIP Jessica Ennis in Oils

This is a work in progress of an oil painting I was inspired to paint after watching our wonderful Team GB in the London Olympics and would like to dedicate this piece to one very special olympian gold medalist, Jessica Ennis. Well done girl!

This painting has taken me two days so far and will eventually have a mainly black background with a few bits and bobs from the audience (flashes etc.)

Oil Painting - Waters Edge

Medium: Oils

Paper: Stretched Canvas
Size: 20" x 16"
Duration: 4 − 6 hours



Well I've finally finished this oil painting (after watching Murray thrash that lump of Swiss Cheese!) which I started painting yesterday. Is it only me, but it is getting really difficult to sketch or paint when the Olympics is on, isn't it?


I'm calling this piece "Waters Edge" and it is a memory of when I went walking with my daughter Jasmine (that's her in the water) earlier in the week. We went to a local beauty spot,  down to the Gil, on the river Wansbeck just outside my local town of Morpeth in Northumberland.

Charcoal Drawing - Megan

This is a time lapse YouTube video I put together when I was sketching my niece Megan in charcoal, I put it together in iMovie on my iMac. I was really just practicing and getting to grips with some new willow charcoal sticks I bought. I forgot how beautiful it is as a medium, I was kind of put off as they always seemed to be really messy whenever I used them. It seems that having the paper nearly vertical helps to keep the artwork clean, well it did for me.

This whole sketch took me about 2-3 hours to complete and although a fairly nice image, I don't think I captured my niece as well as I wanted to.  I ended up using only one stick of charcoal for the whole image, by the time I had finished, that stick had shrunk to the smallest stubble of charcoal you could just about hold!

Though I have really enjoyed this session in charcoals and I expect I'll be visiting my willow charcoal sticks again, soon.

Here is the final image:

Free iBook Download Acrylic Painting Tutorial

If you know anything at all about me, you will know I love putting together drawing and painting tutorials on my own web and some of my other art sites I'm a member off.

Now that is all good and well (and I hope you've enjoyed all my how to's and sketching and painting tutorials in the past) but poor Bob Scratchit here, has to feed Mrs Scrathit and our very poor tiny Tim.

So, I've just created and uploaded my first Acrylic Painting Tutorial in the iPad2 iBook format, and whats more it's FREE and available to Download, yeah, yeah, I know I'm never going to get rich overnight by giving away my books for free, but, if you like this one then hopefully you will pay to download further tutorials I create.

The iBook, is called Acrylic Painting Tutorial The Cottage. You simply search in the iTunes Store for Acrylic Painting Tutorial from your iPad, iPad2 or PC.

Big, Big Favour to ask
Could any of my Art, Redbubble, Paintings I love and DeviantArt friends, if you have accessed, and downloaded this iBook, could you do me a really big big favour? 




Can you rate this or perhaps write a review for me? On the iTunes Store, there is a row of stars underneath the writing describing the iBook, any stars you give will be greatly appreciated, apparently it helps on future sales.


Thank loads.

Jan



Screenshots

Commission - Portrait of a boy

Medium: Acrylic
Paper: Canvas cut to size
Size: 16″ × 20″
Duration: 5 hours (over two days)

This is a commissioned portrait I painted for an overseas client (the USA). I had only a few days to meet the deadline (for delivery).

I worked from a photo provided for me (normally I like to use my own).

This was a wonderful journey in painting with acrylics again, I would of loved to tried this portrait in oils, but as their was a time issue with this commission, I stuck to my tried and tested acrylics.

Beagle - Acrylic

 
Medium: Acrylic
Paper: Bockingford Not 140Ib
Size: 11″ × 15″ (38cm x 28cm)
Duration: 2 hours

I painted this as a practice for an acrylic demonstration/workshop I have coming up, and set myself only two hours from start to finish to complete the painting. The demonstration is actually about two and a half hours long but I thought it best to restrict the painting to only two hours which leaves me a comfortable thirty minutes for my talk and presentation. I found that two hours was more than enough for the demonstration, but if I had longer, I could probably refine the painting and add more photorealistic detail.

WIP - Started m first oil painting today...

Finally got round to using those oil paints left undisturbed in my studio for so long! This is my first WIP in oils, which I started today, and it's also my first ever attempt at using oils, and all I know about them is what I've read or heard.

The subject reference I chose, is of an iconic local landmark and scenic view in the Lake District, recognise it? So far I've spent about 4-5 hours up to this stage, and have been using only a couple of small palette knives. I started this painting with the intention of using only palette  knives, as I wanted to experiment with a the texture of oils to define the picture, not sure if I'm there yet, will work on it some more tomorrow.

I'm finding that oils does have a real advantage over acrylics (what I'm used to) but has a few cons as well, namely the only way I can get another colour on top of an area I've already painted is by literally spreading it on top of the existing colour, with the edge of a palette knife, hence the rough textured look.

But I cannot deny that some of the colours, especially in the stream where the pebbles are underwater, are coming up beautifully/ I think I need more time to find what I can do with this fantastic medium, experiment more. I definitely want to finish this painting, hopefully tomorrow.

Watch this space.