Jan's Art Studio - Painting a Copper Jug in Watercolours

Jan's Art Studio - Painting a Copper Jug in Watercolours

Jan's Art Studio - Painting a Copper Jug in Watercolours

Jan's Art Studio - Painting a Northumberland Sky

This was a pencil study to sketch Morgan Freeman on a postcard size white card, duration, approximately 1 hour. Quite long, but relaxing music! Feel free to share.

Sketching the Millers

Well, I've finally finished this mini epic commission of "The Millers" a beautiful pack of six dogs grouped together in pencil (size A2 on Bristol Board cartridge) and the icing on the cake is that I managed to complete this large commission of the six dogs, in only five days! I initially estimated to the client that I would need at least 10 days to finish this, I relied on an old trick used by the Star Trek engineer Scotty, when Kirk asks him how long to complete a certain engineering task and he always over estimated, so when he completed his task, Kirk was suitably impressed! Only hope now, is that the client is also suitably impressed!

The Millers, finished, six dogs, sketched in five days! 

 

The finished artwork, all mounted, back board and protective cellophane, now just a wee wait for the client to view and hopefully collect! fingers crossed!


This is some of the wee time lapse movies I put together of me sketching The Millers. It basically shows me sketching the each dog of the six pack, I will be releasing the rest as time progresses more until there is a complete set. Apologies about the credits at the end of Part I, I need to speak to Mr Spielberg, I did type in all the words but somehow they all reverted to default! I'm better at sketching than movie making! Enjoy. 

Sketching the Millers Pt I 

 

 Sketching The Millers Pt II (ignore the Part I in the opening title, my mistake!)

Sketching the Millers Pt III

 

 

WIP of a Commission of two cats I'm sketching

Well I've just about finished the first of two cats I'm currently sketching.

Started working on cat no.2

Practicing with pastels

Thought I would practice using my pastels before my class I'm giving tomorrow, for the reference, I used an image by the fantastic pastel artist Nathalie Picoulet. 

Although loads of fun using pastels, it quickly becomes messy, creeps all over your clothes, face and the whole studio 

Snow Dog - Acrylic

SNOW DOG

Medium: Acrylic
Canvas: Boldmere stretched canvas
Size: 40″ × 50″ (1016mm x 1270mm)
Duration: 4-6 hours over two days

Finally finished this mini epic of “Snow Dog” (on a 40″ × 50″ stretched canvas) which took me about 4-5 hours over a couple of days. I ended up building myself a bespoke larger easel just for this project, which was fun and very much a requirement to complete the task at hand.

Photographer Grant Glendinning kindly gave me permission to use one of his photographs as the reference for this painting.

I thought I was fortunate to be in my local art supply store when they were having a sale on their canvases, they were practically giving away their larger canvases, so muggings here thought I'll have a few of those, so two 40 x 50 inches and on 32 x 40 inch canvases later I managed to get them into my art studio  despite the wind trying it's damnedest to get this aspiring artist and his canvases airborne. A couple of hours later I finally got the endeavours of my bargain hunting safely to my studio.

I decided today was the day to try out one of the new canvas and unwrapping one of the large 40 x 50 inch ones, I suddenly realised that this was indeed a very large canvas and it dawned on me that the size was far too big for any easel I possessed, what to do?

Well bot giving up I rummaged through my tool shed and came across some wood from an old children's bunk bed and an old terrified telescope tripod lying in the corner (the telescope had long vacated this mortal realm for pastures new, but thankfully I kept the legs!)

A good hour or so later, I somehow managed to create for myself a new easel, which, I hoped, would be future proof, and would enable me to paint on larger than normal canvases.

Just christened one of my bargain canvas and am using the easel on top of a table, it seems, I like standing (I happily found out) when painting on large canvases! I could of used this new easel on the floor but found that it was more comfortable to raise it onto my studio table.

 A work of art in itself,if I do say so myself!

Those old telescope legs really came in handy!

Yes? Can I help you?

Just one last bit over here...yup! that'll do it!

She was becoming really irresistible, and always looking for attention...

As you can see, I just about got it outside my studio!