The Red Pen.

This loose watercolour figure painting is typical of the type of work that I have been doing recently.  It is similar to another painting on here called, 'Reflection', whereby the subject is busy writing on a piece of paper.  

In this version the person is turned around more towards the viewer.  His head leans forward, which presents interesting foreshortening challenges.  With not much to look at in the way of features,  the focal point moves towards his hands.  This was the real attraction to me.  I am a big fan of drawing and painting hands.

The skin tones on view on the hands, arms and face have a subtle mixture of warm and cool tones sitting adjacent to each other.  The blue shirt and grey hair give an overall cool cast to the figure.

Loose portraits.

I thought I would add a reference photo along with one of my loose watercolours.  In this way you can see that I choose a focal point in most of my loose portraits.  Once that is established, there is no need for too much detail to be added, even to the point of dispensing with facial features, like the mouth in this case.

This is titled 'Wonder' and hopefully you can see that there is enough in the little girl's expression to justify such a title.  Makes me 'Wonder' how minimal and loose an artist can be in his / her attempt to get the message across.

The ref photo is from Barbra Tester, a member of paint my photo.  A site that has supplied me with most of my ref photos.  www.paintmyphoto.ning.com

A site well worth joining if you are an artist.

Meet Dunno the Clown

This is a loose watercolour portrait I did of my friend Robert McGowan.  AKA Dunno the Clown.

Dunno is a very popular children's entertainer and magician in my part of the world,  Robert along with his wife also runs his shop Duo in Largs, where you can hire balloons for your wedding reception decoration.  This is also the place where you can meet and talk with Dunno the Clown in person.

For this painting, I began by concentrating on the negative space between Dunno and his little friend.  From there, everything became looser as it reached the edges.

Basin Street

This one is called Basin Street.
It is a mixture of Indian Ink work done with the fork as usual, and some watercolour.   I was much heavier with my use of watercolour this time as I wanted to create a smoky atmosphere.  I used earthy tones for the most part, but if you look behind the pianist's head you may see a colourful image of him drifting into the room.  This is a mixture of the colourful music and his aura.  That's what I tried to depict anyway.
We have been to New Orleans a couple of times now and have visited Basin Street itself.  Not much there to see now except the Lafayette graveyard and the Basin Street Railroad station which is now a museum.
We did, however, visit the French Quarter and enjoyed some fantastic live music in the Bourbon Street Jazz clubs.

O Fortuna

Another musically inspired piece.  I am a big fan of Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana.    This little pen and wash sketch is my vision of the energy in that first measure of 'O Fortuna'.
This again was created with a broken plastic fork and a few light sweeps of watercolour.

Glance from the east

I have posted this image recently in various locations but it is a favourite of mine at the moment, so here it is again!  I began this watercolour by laying on various washes to establish the veil around her head.  I ignored the skin tones initially, but began to gradually add one or two colours from the veil onto the woman's features - including the cadium orange on the right side of her face.  Complimentary colours were to the fore again, much the same as my 'Claire' portrait from a little while back.
Plenty of juxta-positioning of warm against cool too.  It all adds up to another bold watercolour portrait.  Who said that watercolour paintings are 'wishy washy'?

Can you see the rat?

Like the title???  Nothing to do with the gentleman in this painting.  When I posted this on PMP  (Paint my Photo), someone commented that they could see a rat sitting on the table below the map that the guy is holding.  This is not the case of course.  The dark shape is in fact his thigh and a small part of his shorts on view.  Can't help but see the rat all the time now!
I have added a detail of his face so that this distraction is removed.  This is another study in light.  We all know that when painting with watercolour the white parts are nothing more than dry untouched paper, but there is a trick - a subtle one - but it works nicely.
Whites appear whiter when there is a bold darker colour placed next to it.  In the same way, the bold colour appears even bolder when placed next to the white.  'Sparkle' is a term I have heard often in watercolour critique - and that is what I tried to achieve here.