Warm & Cold

With the weather outside changing dramatically now that we are heading into winter, I thought I would add a nice warm sunny watercolour.  This is called 'Cuddles' and is both warm in colours and  in subject.  The reference photograph came once again from the Paint my photo.ning website.

This was quite a bold attempt to put warm hues directly next to cool ones.  Lots of reflected lights here.  The red on the elderly lady's cardigan has been bounced up towards both of their faces.  You can see on her sleeve, the colour has been bleached out.  This is the way it appeared on the ref photo.  I like to think that the colour has moved directly from there up to their faces.  It is just a little thought I keep in my mind when I am doing this type of painting.  It helps to keep everything in harmony.

So now we move into the winter months, and to mark this, here is a much colder painting.  Just two colours used here, ultramarine blue and rose madder.  Once again the subject photo is the flute player.  This is actually version three of this subject.  

In this painting the focal point is the area around the hands, although her foot is fighting for a bit of attention too.  Creating more than one focal point can be worth considering.  It encourages the eye to move over the painting. Her face is only hinted at.  This was quite deliberate on my part.  I feel that those hands and feet deserve centre stage.

Finally, here is a flier for a lecture / demo / workshop that I will be doing at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum next month.  If you are in the area drop in.

A statue and a leaf.

This watercolour of a flute player is taken from a photograph by Steve Lyddon on the Paint my Photo site.  I just knew when I saw it that I would do a watercolour version of it.
I intend to redo this as some of the proportions are not just quite right, but the general idea is there.
My intention was to give the painting that 'fresco' look.  Steve has taken quite a few photographs of
statues and most of them look very appealing to an artist.

There were just three colours used in this project.  Turquoise, Indian red and Yellow Ochre.  For the marble-like tones on the face I used the turquoise with just a touch of Indian red to tone it down.  For the darker colours I did the opposite.  My Indian red had a touch of turquoise.  The yellow ochre was added near the end to warm up certain areas.

I didn't pre-draw any of this, which is a pity as the arms and hands didn't turn out the way I wanted.
Here is a picture of the painting taken about half way through.

I would have preferred to stop just after this stage, but this has been a worthwhile exercise.  Watch out for the new version on here soon.

Around about the same time,  I cut a silhouette profile of my granddaughter, Jessica, from a leaf.  

This was quite difficult as the cut tends to want to go along the grain of the leaf surface.  It probably 

isn't too good for my scissors either.  Here is the result below.