ART from Norfolk
We are settling into our new home and I’m beginning to find more space and time to paint. This week I completed two pieces, this is the first to get up on a wall:
Image cropped :
“Gold”
Acrylics, sand texture, gels and inks on stretched canvas.
Size: 70cm x 60cm x 2cm (approx) or 27½” x 23½” x 1″
Well, we have at last settled into our new house. My painting space is very limited but I’m managing to scrape a hole big enough for myself and the paints … the large one below [abstract seascape) was painted mostly outdoors, great fun that was in 32 degrees C, trying to keep the acrylics wet!
The others were kinda commissions – Bay scene (Devon) was requested by the lady of our house and is now enconced in our seascape themed downstairs bathroom. Photo is crap, ‘cos there’s not enough room to stand back and get it in the camera frame properly. Never mind. The poppies was requested by a friend of mine, hope she likes it.
‘Seascape with sand texture’
Acrylics, inks and texture paste (sand) on stretched canvas.
120cm x 100cm x 4cm
‘Bay- Devon’
Acrylics and inks on stretched canvas 100cm x 39cm
‘Poppies and wheat’
Acrylics and inks, gel pastes, structure pastes on stretched canvas. 45cm x 35cm
View below is minus the reflection.
Quite some time ago I started working on a series of paintings relating to the South African landscape, for some reason I didn’t finish that work. I decided to go back to one of them over the weekend and this is the result, might still do a bit more tweaking (as always!). This area holds a very special place in my heart (and psyche). It is one of the most beautiful parts of the world, glorious in any weather. This is a view of the ampitheatre from the river below. (My own reference photos)
For this one I used acrylic inks, soft pastels, then oil pastels on mixed media paper. Paper size is 16.5″ x 11.5″ (A3), painting takes up all surface of the paper.
The brief I was given from my client was to paint her a picture of her field, which lies behind her offices and home in a rural area of South Norfolk. She wanted a representation of the field in winter and depending on how that went, would probably ask me to do another painting of the field in summer. The field or meadow doesn’t have any major features in it, other than a small coppice of trees and a separate area for her rescued chickens. I knew that she didn’t want me to include the chickens in the finished painting, so I couldn’t mess about with that idea, which was actually what I wanted to do! Chickens make excellent subjects for paintings!
I did have a few issues with the process of painting the required picture and had several different ideas of how to approach it. So, I decided to present her with three versions last Friday and let her decide which one or ones she wanted to keep.
The first one is a realism approach taken from a photograph. I wanted to capture the wintery light and bare branches, the grass was still quite luminous and deeply green. This is on stretched canvas – 19″ x 16″. Acrylics over inks.
The second painting was more like the kind of style I enjoy doing, especially when it comes to depictions of trees. Also on stretched canvas, same size (19″ x 16″) but portrait style. I used an acrylic ink underpainting, topping it off with oil pastels and oil paints.
The third painting was totally abstract and processed using gels, inks and acrylic paint on an artist canvas board. This is about twice the size of the stretched canvas paintings. I forgot to take a photo with my Canon before I took them to the client, and only have this mobile phone photo.
My client was so thrilled with all the paintings that she’s decided she wants all of them! She is going to get them professionaly framed and then I will return to her home and take photos of these paintings in frames. I am overjoyed that she really liked all the work, her husband especially liked the middle painting. She has also decided to feature the paintings in prominent areas of her home – originally she was only going to place the paintings against a wall in one of the corridors leading into her house.
These are the first in a series of flower studies.
All on A3 double gesso-ed acrylic paper.
‘Cosmos – mixed’
Oils blended with glazing medium on acrylic inks background.
‘Daisies in sunlight’
Acrylics on acrylic ink background.
Oil pastels and paints – blended with glazing medium on acrylic ink background.
‘Cosmos -2’
‘Pastel poppies’
Oil pastels blended with glazing medium
I’ve titled this one, ‘On her way’ – it is inspired by the devastating mental health struggles my youngest daughter is currently experiencing after the birth of her baby almost three months ago. These last few months have been extremely traumatic for all of us but last night, when I went to visit her with her older sister, it was like she was back to her old self again. There is still a lot more work needs to be done but it was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel I saw last night, as she walked away from us down the corridor to her room. She seemed to be surrounded by a golden glow and that’s what I wanted to get across in this painting.
“On her way”
Acrylics, inks, soft pastels on Daler Rowney system 3 acid free acrylic paper.
16 1/2″ x 11 1/2″ (not for sale)
Yesht, so I have managed to eventually get myself sorted out with a bit of space to paint in. I tried it out today because the rest of the family have gone away for the weekend, so I could make as much mess as I liked and actually get to concentrate on something for a whole day. Wonderful. I made a little video of the process I use to make paintings on stretched canvas (that are considered abstract) … I don’t work like this all the time.
Anyway, hope you enjoy and I’d appreciate comments on my video if you have the time (or inclination) … be brutal, I can take it. [Yeah, right] This is the finished product:
‘Sea and Sand’
21 ½” x 18″ x ½” [55cm x 46cm x 1.5cm]
Acrylics and inks on stretched canvas.
‘Oil Poppies’
Approx. 12″ x 8″
Underpainting of alcohol inks, added area of gold metal effect medium, then overpainted with oils (not artist quality) on canvas board.
I didn’t have any linseed oil or other mediums, as well as cleaning solvents, so was hesitant to try out these oils but then discovered that I could use Baby oil to dilute the paint and to clean the brushes, also much better on the skin! So far the baby oil doesn’t appear to have created any dull patches – the paint is still wet, I expect it will only be dry and fully cured in a month’s time. The oils and canvas board came with the set I describe below.
Soft pastel studies – my first attempts using this medium:
‘Dartmoor landscape’ from reference photo in a book.
Approx. 11″ x 7″
Soft pastels (not artist quality) on cheap scrapbooking type project paper (blue).
‘Orange landscape’
Approx. 5½” x 7″
Soft pastels (not artist quality) on cheap scrapbooking type project paper (blue).
Footnote:
I was given a compact artist’s kit comprising oils, acrylics and watercolour materials, plus palette and sample canvas boards, sketching pads, brushes, painting knives etc. etc. for a Christmas present. These sample paintings are the results of playing about with the stuff in the kit.
I have never used soft pastels (chalk pastels) before and am finding them really fun to work with. I enjoy the way I can layer over the colours and blend to get quite interesting effects. This has inspired me to try and purchase better quality soft pastels as soon as I can, as well as some good quality paper – I’d like to turn out more impressive work in the future – so watch this space!
I hope everyone who visits this page had a lovely Christmas and everything of the very best fo 2017 – let’s hope it’s a positive year for all of us!
Yes, I’ve been absent from WordPress for quite a while … the whole of November has been a bit of a bugger up on my side – mainly because I’ve been in and out of hospital. I’m on the mend now and getting stronger all the time but it’s been a very long, stressful and frustrating process, don’t recommend it.
I was doodling about with inks recently, just to see if I could still do something artistic while I was feeling so down. So here are the results … one (the daisies) was a request from a friend of my daughters, I hope she likes it.
.
“Spring fields”
11 ¾” x 7 ¾ “
Acrylic paints, Daler Rowney inks, Pebeo Fantasy Prisme paint (still settling and drying, so there will be changes in the final effects once it’s dried and cured overnight).
Texture detail:
Driving home the other evening, I took a quick photo out of the side of the car of the rape seed fields … I love this time of year. I was inspired by this scene but didn’t want to create just another yellow, blue and green picture … so got fiddling about with the Pebeo paint, which takes an absolute age to dry completely but the results are always interesting. I will also press this when completely dry so that it lies nice and flat.
“Warmscape”
22″ x 18″
Acrylics, texture paste and gels, inks, spray paint on stretched canvas
I haven’t sealed this one yet with an acrylic binder or gel, waiting for it to cure.
Close ups of texture
“Somewhere, a place”
Acrylics, inks, glues, gels on A3 (297 x 420mm or 111.7 x 16.5″) acid free acrylic paper using various techniques.
Close ups of colour and texture detail
“Gold waves”
9 ½” x 6 ½” (Actual painting size)
Acrylics, gels, inks and metallic effect Pebeo paper on mixed media paper.
Detail of foil work
I did a large canvas a few years ago that I’ve never been entirely satisfied with. I used bronze metallic paint to highlight the texture but it isn’t working properly. So I now want to bring it up to speed. The smal piece on paper that I did today is a kind of mock-up for the work I want to do soon on the older large canvas – which looks like this at the moment:
This canvas is 47″ x 39″ and about 2″ deep – I haven’t really had anywhere to work on it because of its size but I’m determined next week to take it downstairs and get started. Wish me luck!
From my own source/reference photo – boats anchored at Tobermory, Scotland.
Watercolour on paper – same as before.
“Lost at the mall”
24″ x 18″
Reworked old canvas. Acrylics, glues, fabric, hand-dyed silk, caulk and gels.
Trying some new colour combos out today. Don’t know as I like this one yet. Might chuck it 🙂
There is a little back story behind this one, though. Many years ago, I lost my youngest daughter, who was about four at the time, when we were shopping in a busy department store. My eldest daughter (who was also with me) and I, spent a frantic fifteen or twenty minutes running backwards and forwards trying to find her. The horrible thing, for me, was that I’d had a particularly vivid nightmare the night before and in it I was hysterically running through what appeared to be train carriages (also brightly lit and full of people staring at me) searching anxiously for something or someone … all the time I was looking for my little girl, I was trying to remember how the dream ended but I couldn’t! I think these kinds of dreams are called prescience … don’t know much about that. In any case, my heart was in my mouth as we ran through the garishly lit and noisy mall trying to find my baby – there had been a spate of child abductions in the area where we lived during that time, which made things even more scary. People watched me running past, screaming for my child, shaking their heads and looking worried but nobody actually did anything to try and help. We eventually discovered that she’d gone back to the parking area and was patiently sitting on the pavement by the front wheels of my car, waiting for us to come and fetch her.
Texture detail.
“Kelp No. 2″
Acrylics on stretched canvas. The canvas was previously substantially treated with structural pastes and fillers, resulting in a heavy sculptural feel to the work.
24″ x 18″ (or 61cm x 45.5cm) approximately 3/4” thick.
Close ups of textural detail:
‘Windy day at Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk’
Acrylics, collage (silk material), effect paints on stretched canvas.
24″ x 18″
Some close ups to show textural detail:
“Autumn Texture”
Acrylic and mixed media on stretched canvas. 39″ x 47″ gallery wrap 3″ deep
Some detail of texture in close up:
Janice Heather Scott 