Inspiration. Where to find it?

There are times you are completely at one with your creativity and you know exactly what you want to paint, what you want to say in that painting and you even know exactly what techniques you'll use.

Then there are times you want to paint, need to paint - but there is no great calling from any one subject.
What do you do in times like these?

For me, the answer is, I go to my garden. Within it there are many statues. Each one was bought because it had something special about it - and this quality I will endeavour to paint.

Do you have a store of inspiration? Is it your environment, or photos of places you have visited?

Here is the beginnings of my new painting, inspired by my garden statue, Ferdinand.

the pencil drawing

adding background washes of french ultramarine

and yellow ochre

Mary Deere

I was playing around, painting a Friday Foto from the Painting Friends forum (thank you, Mary).

So as a treat - and because Tonya has no patience (tee hee) - you can see beginning to end of this one, all in one blog post.

So here we go with painting Mary Deere :)

drawing the deer

First background washes

enhancing the foreground

adding some background and painting the deer

after adding a few more shrubs, here she is, the finished painting :

Mary Deere

In praise of good friends.

The internet can be a wonderful thing. Within the worldwide web we have made some good friends, who we love very much.

Recently, one of those good friends - Amy Tomei - sent us a parcel, just so we knew she loved us too!

Missy was fascinated by the parcel.

Is this for me?

Its a locket for mummy, with mine own picture in it!

and the picture of my sister in Heaven, Spotty

Pleeeeze let me habs it, mummy!

Comes to me, Foxy!

and Heffalump - meet my teeth!

Den me hypnotised mummy to gib me a tweet

and it werked! 

 Thank you so much Amy - the locket will be treasured forever - the watercolour paints and paper will be used to create something nearly as beautiful as your friendship -- though I have a sneaky feeling that Missy's toys won't last that long!

The Boy King

The finished painting - hopefully you enjoyed watching him progress.

The Boy King

The painting will be added to my permanent gallery site
Pat Elliott Paintings.

Boy King 5

Carrying on with the greys and deepening the features and shadows, which helps to create the illusion of a three dimensional mask.

The masking was removed also. I'm not satisfied with the white spaces the masking left behind, they don't quite match my vision for the painting.
The next changes I will make are to the white areas, they will get tidied up and subtle reminisces of Egyptian heiroglyphs will be added.

Tomorrow you will see the finished painting.

Boy King 4

Because the theme of shades of grey was already in my mind from the previous painting, it was continued into this one.

The first wash is a pale grey, just to fix the Boy King into the painting.

Boy King 3

Now the painting is the right way up - and I did add a second "touch up" wash onto the sand to give it a little more punch.

Next, painting the Boy King will begin.