My PC is still dead. The silver lining is that it forces me to do more traditional stuff. That’s one of my goals these year too (I’ll write more on my goals later).

However, because the year is already long in tooth, I’m posting my first pics for the year. One of my goals/challenges, whatever you want to call it, is to make two horse portraits per week. I took the first two weeks off for holidays’ sake, so these first ones I made in week 3.

These first ones are off-the-cuff warming up ones:

Crescent & Moonie
A6, Crescent w/c pencils and coloured pencil, Moonie graphite pencil 2B

And there you have it.

Beacause I’m a highly peculiar person, I got terribly excited.

So I picked a rock.

Of which I planned to make 30 studies.

You can pretty much guess what happened.

These are all of the same rock we had to paint last time in the still-life. Different angles, obviously.The large one I did on another session, on purpose, for I had my frustration threshold sufficiently broken. Lord a small thing can be difficult!

On the side I started a white seashell, but that one I’ll show you when we get to the session on which I finished it.

In the meantime, a new piece. I was browsing through Finnish horse blogs and came across one with a really beautiful (handsome!) Thoroughbred. The blog happened to have a drawing contest open, so… Do I have to mention the deadline was that evening?

So, some midnight (all-night) painting and this was the end result:

(oil on canvas mounted paper, 20×20 cm)

The surprising thing was that I could still enter AND WON. WOW.

Eventhough I’m not really happy with this piece, on any level, I’ve been thinking more and more about how much I want to paint. And how much practice I really should be getting. Crying about not knowing isn’t going to help. I need to paint and cry.

//edit. Forgot the almost-most-important thing: my laptop crashed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed (with tears in my eyes) I can get all my old digital works as well as new WIPs back. Somebody please tell me why it’s so impossible to use Dropbox!

This second watercolour painting lesson the assignment was to paint a fairly complex still-life (= several objects of different qualities). Because I had no real plans as to what I wanted to do (and the crow I drooled over the first time seemed too difficult to attempt), I did as I was told.

I must say that it’s rare experience to feel as desperate as I did this time. I hate green and of course the still-life was full of it. I liked the vibrancy of the colours but I couldn’t translate that on the paper. I fully screwed up the base washes. Small things like that.

Also I was very annoyed at myself. WHY do I have to draw with brushes, why? Maybe I do have brushes that are too small (and following this logic I since went and spent over 100 euros on watercolour brushes on one go).

Well, you can’t hit it every time. Not even the every tenth you wish with watercolours. I’m a long way off from professional.

Felt like drawing something quick and use the pink watercolour stick. Alas,below the results. This was also January assignment for pARTy-challenge (@dA). Very difficult ref for me, mainly because I found it difficult to think of anything to add or remove from the original photo. Which is usually my approach to refs.

But all in all, pretty fun sketching. And I like the way I pulled off the wintery quality I set out to find. However, I think I overworked the piece, again. I need to learn when to quit. C’est la vie.

(reference © tragedyseen @ deviantart.com)

This week’s finished work is a commission I tried to finish a month ago. “Tried” mainly because of all the work hassles.

Very much inside the comfort zone because it’s a graphite work with a fairly traditional approach. Very much outside because it’s about dogs. Without exaggeration these are numbers 10 and 11 on my dog drawing career. Thusly my only guide was the references I had and frankly I still don’t have a clue on how to read character in dogs for example.

In a way this was a very successful learning opportunity. The medium and the style were very familiar to me even if the subject was really alien. Maybe someday I’ll learn more if I keep taking baby steps.

(I will be making a walkthrough type series of this piece at a later date. The work itself will have some little changes mainly because I’m not entirely pleased with it and the commissioner wanted me to add the dogs’ names. Updated image will be posted on the walkthrough.
The image is a bit oddly framed for it didn’t fully fit in my scanner. Graphite pencils on 24×32 cm watercolour paper.)

Firstly, as a text-only update, I must brag about the old paintings I’ve been fixing. I am a little annoyed at how lazy I tend to be: it might be a valid option to do everything properly on the first go… Alright, to some extent this comes down to using my time wisely…

Secondly, finally a test piece that has been on the works for at least two months.

(reference image by KLM. @ kalmanen.deviantart.com)

Gessoed MDF, a thin layer of acrylics and topped with watercolours. For quite some time now I’ve been thinking whether watercolours stick on top of acrylic paints (for fixing stuff etc.). Yes it does, but I should’ve bothered with fixative for some parts. But really, as  you can deduct from the quality of this work, I finished very quickly instead of really making this a proper piece.

I couldn’t have imagined how difficult it was to control the painting process. However, I’m guessing mostly this was due to two things: wrong kind of brush and too hard (= non-absorptive) painting surface. I would think this would work better with a thick paper.

On the plus side one could mark the superb effects, especially in background work. The colours ran and blended really nicely, though a bit unexpectedly. A bit more patience and with better planning this could produce pretty neat works! I also liked the textures on the horse, even though otherwise the horse was pretty ruined due to bad colour choices.

Next time the amount of white must be drastically limited. It’s really difficult to cover up mistakes and approximations in the acrylic blocking stage with watercolour. (See the pale area reserved for the mane and edges with the background blue…) I also need to investigate why the watercolour didn’t cover all the parts of the board nicely.

All in all, a nice experiment even if the result wasn’t all that hot.

The last picture for this week is an age-old graphite drawing which I really had the energy to finish up. Finally, finally. The scan might be lying a bit about the darkness of the background etc., but…

And that’s that.

• At the same time I should inform that there’s a slight problem with the Visual Expression updates because I have not taken pictures…  Tulossa on ainakin grafiikasta kaksi kappaletta heti kun saan asiat järjestykseen. Maalauksen postauksissa olen hieman kahden vaiheilla, koska en vielä haluaisi esitellä päätöitä.
• Studio-postausta ei tule, koska en ole ollut studiolla. Tämä kommentti ehkä vaatii parikseen seuraavan hymiön: :’(
• Akvarellikurssipostaus tulee ensi viikolla, jos nyt voisi muistaa valokuvata työnsä. Geez.

But on with the show!

This week, on Sunday, was the first meeting of the watercolour course. I was a bit nervous about my skill level but the course seemed alright. I hope I’ll get better as I got some practice under my belt.

I was a bit ambitious and started with painting a pheasant. It was calling me with its bright purple chest during the intro, so really no choice.

(The picture quality is truly horrible and doesn’t really give out the best impression. I have to take a better one later. But in the meantime, enlarge the painting for it to make even the slightest bit of sense.)

I really didn’t pay much attention to the scale so the head is extremely small compared to the body. Mostly on purpose, seriously.

Well, that’s about that. The other thing I got finished is an age-old Arabian painting. I actually thought I had uploaded it to my blog already, but since I hadn’t, and I did some small tweaks to it, I think it is a nice way to bulk up my “This Week’s Finished” posting.

Next week I hope to post several of those “nearly finished” pieces I have lying around.

Kyseessä on iänkaiken vanha puuvärein tehty poni, josta nyt lopulta ei sitten tullut huikea menestystarina. Sarjassa “ihan kiva”, mutta puuväriongelmat ja tekniikkani puutteet yhdistettynä kyvyttömyyteeni saada skannerin avulla mitään esityskelpoista estivät sen suuremman menestyksen.

No, laitetaan tämä harjoituksen nimiin ja jatketaan.

(Ponissa mallina käyttämäni hienon valokuvan on ottanut Caserta-stock @ dA.com.)

——

Huomenna sitten suuntaan maalaustapahtumaan demoamaan maisemamaalausta (tulee olemaan tavalliseen tapaani värikästä kiveä/kalliota). Siitä postaus, ja mahdollisesti myös videota, loppuviikosta.

Aluksi en ollut oikein kiinnostunut, sillä en tiennyt hirveästi posliininmaalauksesta. Paitsi, että se on hankalaa, joten pari tuntia vaikutti vähän hölmöltä. Lahjonta ja kiristys kuitenkin ovat osoittautuneet varsin tehokkaiksi suostuttelukeinoiksi, joten nimi oli listassa ja sinne piti mennä.

Pajassa opeteltiin tekemään tavallisia siveltimenvetoja, erityisesti “pilkku”-vetoja, pienellä pyöreällä siveltemellä. Tältä sivulta löytyy hyvät kuvat opetelluista vedoista. Noin tunnin harjoittelun jälkeen (mukana myös mm. värin valmistusta ja muuta valmistelua) maalattiin oma aihe lautaselle. Itse valuin toki kohti artdecomaista soihtusommitelmaa (itse sekoitettu punainen ja ruskea!). Ei liene tulleen yllätyksenä kenellekään…

Yllä siis elämäni ensimmäinen kosketus posliinimaalaukseen ja taitoni noin tunnin merkin kohdalla. Sanotaanko, ettei kummosta, mutta kehityskelpoista. Minua neuvonut opettaja oli varsin kannustava ja yritti houkutella kursseille. Kuulemma minusta saisi oikein Tekijän, kun vain alkaisin harrastamaan…

Itse asiassa mietinkin lähteväni kurssille, muttei näin keskellä kautta enää kannata. Ensi vuonna ehkä.

Etenkin siksi alkoi kiehtomaan, kun luin taas taidekirjoja. Kimmo Pälikön “Kuvan tekeminen” -sarjan (luettavissa kokonaan verkossa osoitteessa http://www.kp-art.fi/artbook/, suosittelen!) ”Teoria ja tekniikka” -osassa puhuttiin posliinimaalauksesta. Siis ihan oikeasti! Sivulla 232 sanotaan seuraavaa:

Posliinimaalaukseen yhdistetään usein vain lautasten ja posliiniesineiden koristelu. Uusien maalausaineiden, ja menetelmien myötä mukaan ovat enenevässä määrin tulleet myös laatoille maalatut taulut, jotka kehystetään tavallisten taulujen tapaan.

Kyllä, ensimmäisen lauseen allekirjoitan. Toinen virke… TAHTOO, count me in! Ehkä siis jo ensi vuonna posliininmaalausta minullekin?

(Pahoittelen taas huonoa kännykkäkamerakuvaa.)