3xWeekly - Difficult Week of Painting More Dogs

In 'Painting Daily' Carol talks of letting a painting go if it’s not working; this week I’m finding that difficult. Maybe it’s because my friend asked me to paint her dog, or maybe it’s because it doesn't look right. So far three days are gone and instead of letting go…I’m procrastinating. In her book, Carol explains that if you don't like something it could be the composition; not sure that's it. It's probably the crap drawing. In my haste to paint, I haven’t really worked on getting the image drawn correctly and it’s cost me 3 days. So with a heavy heart I'm calling it quits on this painting. Next time more time needs to be dedicated to drawing; or for expediency the image could be traced.

Previously, I painted my brother’s dog in an abstract style and wasn’t impressed. This time it was going to be more photo realistic...well that was the plan. Using cyan blue, process magenta and white I built up the colour to try and reflect the hair. It didn’t work, and after obsessing over it for a while, I tried adding some pastel...but that didn’t work either. With four days already lost… it has to be deemed finished.

My Samoyed's were such fantastic dogs it’s sad that they are no longer with me, but I have some great photos to paint from. This was going to be a quick painting but I did spend two days on it. Even if the painting could be improved, this week’s lesson learned has to be… don’t obsess and let it go. I will live to paint another day and hopefully keep learning.

‘3xWeekly’ - Paintings of My Dog & Cat

Feeling good, last week my first four dog paintings came out better than expected and I'm really excited to continue. After searching like crazy for my next photo, I came across a really old picture of my dog Lenny. For a big dog he lays in funny positions. With leftover paint from the previous weeks' paintings I had already painted a few sheets of A4 acrylic paper with yellow ochre background colour.

The first painting came out really nice, I used process cyan, magenta and process yellow to create the dark tones and really loved the outcome. At first the background didn’t look good, so I took a pallet knife and scraped in a few extra colours.

Didn't like my first try at the second painting; the dog was painted in blues and greens. Thought the tones might be too similar, but that was also true for the first photo. Then decided it might be the background, so I put orange & yellow over the magenta and outlined part of the dog in black. Think it's much better now.

The third painting was inspired by an old photo of my cat. This photo was always one of my favourites and thought it would look nice on A3 paper. For this painting I went with a blue background against a white/magenta cat. In my opinion, this one really came out nice.  No more experimenting with this image… for now that is.

Really starting to feel more confident, 3xweekly so far is working out.  Even though each painting isn't perfect... I'm learning! 

Acrylic Painting Class – Final Project with Joel

We had three weeks for the final project and could choose any subject to paint. A cool picture of my dog Linus as a puppy was my choice. I wanted to use the colour mixing and glazing that we learned in previous lessons. Three weeks was not enough time; even after bringing mine home to work on, it was never completed. This was partially due to my unwillingness to make the painting worse in order to make it better and partly because I just wasn’t sure what it needed. Someday I hope to come back to it. If anyone has any constructive suggestions I'm open to them. The dog doesn't pop like it should and the background may be too busy.

While painting this photo I was inspired to try a pallet knife version and be bolder and more abstract. I didn't restrict myself to mixing the paint and didn't put in a background. This painting took a lot less time and in my humble opinion, came out better than the final project.

I brought it into class for Joel to look at and he liked it too.

Cat Painting from 'Compendium of Acrylic Painting Techniques'

Leisure Painter is one of many art magazines in the UK, it's full of articles and advertisements all relating to art. There is a plethora of information; details on art clubs, exhibitions, book reviews, website news, letters, tips, views and tutorials for watercolour, acrylic, pastel etc. The adverts at the back for Holidays & Courses are interesting too; someday soon I’m going to go on a painter’s holiday.

The May 2014 issue had an article ‘From A to B’ that discussed using a pantograph; which was too difficult for me to use and a waste of my money. There was also an article demonstrating a painting by Bob Brandt called ‘Sunlit Harbour’; it was from ‘Compendium of Acrylic Painting Techniques’ by Gill Barron.

The Compendium book turned out to be very useful. There was an assignment on the glazing technique-pg147, which I tried. I wasn't as successful with the technique but I liked the painting. Glazing takes patience and I’m not a doctor....laugh here.

Annual subscriptions to magazines are less expensive; however I like to sample them all, so I'll just keep buying them as and when.

Pop Art

My next project with Jane @ www.ashleybrianart.co.uk was of my Tibetan Terrier Lucy. I always loved Warhol’s style and decided to create a pop art type painting next. Lucy is adorable and with the perfect photo, it was inevitable she would be my subject.

Photoshop helped me to adjust the image, using Filter/Artistic/Cutout and then playing with: No. of levels, Edge simplicity and Edge fidelity.

After doing that project, which took nearly six weeks, I realized starting with my lightest colour first would have been easier. Adding the orange over the blue and purple was tough, even though I was working with acrylics.

To test this theory I made a smaller pop version of a Giraffe and as expected, it was easier to do. However, it probably needs a second coat of red.