Last painting of 2016 - Horse race

Stretch yourself. If there's one thing I've learned in 2016, then it's that if you stretch yourself, and try something different, sometimes it will work out and you'll surprise yourself. Other times, mind you, it might turn out to be total pigswill, but then that's all part of the learning process. This time three days ago a horse painting was not on my agenda at all. Still, after Mary suggested it a couple of days ago, I was so pleased with the horse that I painted yesterday that I thought I'd stretch myself and have a go at painting a horse racing scene. So here it is:-

Horse race

Mary's Horse

 My wife watched me doing the tutorial with the hummingbird a couple of days ago. She asked about it, and I explained that the idea was that I'd go through the process of painting the hummingbird, and then try to use a similar technique to paint my own birds - hence the green woodpecker I posted yesterday. She thought for a moment and then made this observation : - "So you're painting birds now are you? All well and good if you like that sort of thing. But why don't you paint horses - I like horses."

Well, there's no other answer to that than - "I'll give it a bash." is there? So here it is: -

Mary's horse - watercolour on paper

This one falls into the category of paintings which occasionally make me think I'm getting somewhere.Pretty much everything I tried with it came off.

Watercolour Kingfisher

Kingfisher - watercolour on paper

It's funny just how quickly you can paint one of these wee birds once you have a method for doing it. This one took perhaps 30 minutes in total - 5 minutes - if that - to drawn the outline sketch and pain in the background last night - maybe 25 minutes to paint it this morning. I like this one more than the woodpecker.

My own work inspired by the tutorial

I wanted to try to put some of what I'd learned doing the hummingbird tutorial to use, and this is what I came up with: -

Green Woodpecker

This is a green woodpecker.

Ruby Throated Hummingbird - Watercolour

When I posted my parrot yesterday I think that I might have mentioned that I've been following some YouTube tutorials. The parrot itself is original - I used some techniques from the tutorials, but I wasn't copying anyone else's work - it was based on a photograph. However, I really liked one of the birds I saw on a tutorial, and I couldn't resist following along. The result was this one. It's not bad considering that my painting room does not have the internet, so I was having to watch for a couple of minutes, but basically pause every time the artist changed colours.

Ruby Throated Humingbird

Not too bad, is it? If you fancy having a go for yourself, here's the link to the tutorial.
Peter Seeler - Ruby Throated Hummingbird tutorial
It's one of several tutorials posted by a terrific artist called Peter Seeler - there's some beautiful line and wash pictures as well. I wish I had talent like that.

New Medium - Watercolour pencils - Parrot

My middle daughter bought me a lovely set of watercolour pencils for Christmas, and I've been fighting shy of using them for a couple of days, while I found some online tutorials on YouTube. You can do a lot worse than watching some of these yourself if you're every thinking of having a go. Basically, type in the medium you want to use, and the sort of thing you'd like to paint, then tutorial, and chances are you'll be able to find something to meet your needs.

In this picture I synthesized what I picked up from three or four different tutorials: -

Parrot - watercolour pencils on A4 paper

On reflection I'm thinking that although I like the background, in which I used a red, an orange and a purple, I can't help thinking that it might have made more effective if I'd used some blues and greens.

Watercolour- water effects - river reflection

Elvet Bridge - Durham

There are a number of bridges still standing in Britain that have buildings and structures on them, and this one, the Elvet Bridge in Durham is one of them. Obviously I wanted to paint the bridge, which I love, as well as I could, but what I was most interested in was getting the reflections in the water, and on this score at least I'm quite happy with what I achieved. This was a one session painting. I dampened the whole piece of paper, then quickly applied the sky - mostly cerulean blue - then the river - a mixture of cerulean and cobalt, just to make it slightly deeper in colour than the sky. While the river blue was still wet I started applying grey, brown and green reflections, and I'm pleased with the way they diffused into the water, although I did apply some more reflections when it had dried.

Watercolour and water effects

Well, I say water effect, but that goes for sky effects as well. I've been reading up and watching tutorials in the last couple of days, and I've tried to put what I think I've picked up into effect with this painting of a lighthouse: -

I can't lie, I'm quite pleased with this. The sky is even a little more subtle than it appears on this scan, and I'm pleased with the way that the sea has come out, and with the dolour combinations. It's almost completely just water colour, but I've use just a little white gouache in places.

Bus Project

Nothing ventured nothing gained. I wasn't happy with where I'd got to with the bus yesterday, so today I used layers of ordinary watercolour paint to darken it. Here's the finished version:-

I'm pleased with this. The colour of the bus in the foreground, especially the darker areas in the front are much better now, and draw the eye in the way that I hoped they would. I guess that this is now a mixed media painting since I've used watercolour on top of the gouache in some areas. There was a little more work to do on the background, and also the windows of the bus. It's maybe worth comparing this with where I was with it yesterday.

Bus Painting Project- Gouache

Old bus in East Grinstead

This is the painting I'm working on at the moment. I'm using gouache. Possible this may be a little bit ambitious since I've only just made my first few tentative steps with water colour as it is. Still, what the hell. I've still some work to do on the background on the right of the bus. as for the bus itself I quite like it, but I do think that the side panels are still too light, despite the fact that I've already applied two layers to them, and so may well have another go at darkening them.

Project Christmas Card: 2

Right, let's update you on what's been going on with my attempts to paint my own Christmas Cards.
Last week I painted this one: -

It's fair to say that I was very pleased. So, apparently, was my wife, who has demanded that we keep this one. So during the week I had another two goes: -

I like the head very much, but the antlers and the body - nah, not so much. SO I had another go: -

Again, there are bits about it I like, but I still hadn't got what I wanted in the way that I had in my first card, the one we're keeping. SO I had another go: -

Thia is much more what I wanted to do - I'm very pleased with this.

WIne Label/Menu design

One of my pen and ink daily sketches caught the eye of the Tambini family, who own the Express Café in Margam. They bought the sketch off me with a view to using it on their new menu and also on their wine label wine - and here's the wine label: -

Project Christmas Card

For the favoured few I decided to put my money where my mouth is and paint my own Christmas Cards. Here's a reindeer that I'm particularly pleased with.

The scanner failed to ick out the very lightly painted pink areas , but even so the scan gives you an idea of what it looks like.