The Art of Reflexology

I created this painting with just three colours: Opera Rose, Cobalt Blue and New Gamboge. Painted on Arches 140lb Rough, 15 x 11" in size.

Reflexology is my job, and I felt like creating a painting that would give me as much pleasure as the job has done, for the last sixteen years! 
Hope you enjoy it .

The Art of Reflexology

Ultraviolet Quartz

Sometimes its a good idea to paint in one colour, it helps you with seeing lights and darks. This is what I did with this little painting - an 11x8 inch, all painted in Ultramarine Violet from the Winsor and Newton artists range of paints.
By the way, there's not a scrap of white in this painting :) 

Glynis, I hope you notice the FeltPet of my little Spotty! She stands right here on the glass computer table, where she still brings me much pleasure.
There is a FeltPet of Missy too, but that wasn't in the right place for this painting :)

Ultraviolet Quartz

The Juice Bar

Over on Painting Friends ( here ) 
we have a challenge to paint some coneflowers and butterfly.

So, this is what I've done, I call it

The Juice Bar

Its on Arches 140 rough ,  11 x 8 inches.
I hope you enjoy it :)

Two Surprises!

I have two surprises to share in this post.

The first was I was fortunate to be one of the recipients of a small painting by Judy of De Draad Aquarellen.

This is it:

Isn't it gorgeous?

If you haven't seen Judy's wonderful watercolours, you will be in for a rare treat if you go to view her blog HERE 

You won't regret it - I love her style, its so beautiful.
Thank you Judy, for my gift. It will be framed, hung and treasured forever. 


and the second surprise?
I was searching to find what would make a garden interesting to a dog, to stimulate them. I found there should be paths for them to patrol, and different levels in the garden, including a spot they could sun themselves and view their domain!
So we made a surprise build for Missy :)

What's this for, daddy?

Its for viewing my domain?

And for sunning myself?

I like it, I do!

I hope your days are also filled with lovely surprises.

Patty's Poppy

My holiday's nearly over and I have been painting, just not as much as I'd like!
Isn't that always the way?

We were having a poppy challenge over on Painting Friends ( click HERE for website)  so I decided to join in .
I took the photo and cropped it further, because I like those images where you are in the heart of the flower.

Without further ado,

Patty's Poppy

This painting - and all the paintings I've ever made - can always be seen on my gallery website HERE

The Alphabet Paintings: V

Here's the finished painting.
I hope you've enjoyed watching it come to life.

Valerie's Violin

alphabet in progress, 3

wet the violin body and added one last wash of wr/bs. Leave to dry.

 Wet the sound hole, drop in indanthrene and paynes grey. That fixed my "mistake" . Wet the top shadow of the fingerboard and painted it with an indanthrene/aliz crimson mix, dropping in some burnt sienna. Wet the lower plate and drop in the ib/ac mix only. That's because it is a plate, not a shadow! Let it dry.

 Paint the shadow to the bridge and the string shadows.
Wet the area of the shadow - but also the back of the bridge, then wash with a dark sticky mix of ib/ac and drop in some sticky mix of bs.
Drop in and walk away!
Leave the paint to mingle to produce interesting shadows. Use a few flicks for string shadows.
Let it dry

 Remove the masking on the strings.
From here there's a bit of tidying up to do to make the strings look neater. Some dry brush in sepia on the curve, then she'll be done!

 Next time you see the violin , it will be the finished picture. I hope you've enjoyed the step by step process.

alphabet in progress, 2

Here's the next stages:

wet the sound hole areas and drop in some indanthrene blue and paynes grey

These are the colour mixes I'll be using on the body of the violin. I find it useful to paint swatches on a strip before I start to put in large washes on the painting.

Mix up two washes in preparation. Raw umber and burnt sienna, then winsor red and burnt sienna.
Wet the violin body, leaving the finger plate dry. Wash the ru/bs mix all over the wet area, then drop in some of the wr/bs mix in places where the violin would naturally be darker. The bridge, the curve, the bottom mid of the painting. Leave to dry.

On the bridge and the lines of the curve,  paint in a  second wash of the wr/bs mix and leave to dry.

Paint a third and last wash of wr/bs mix on the bridge and this time on all of the curve and let these dry.

Now, those of you who know violins will probably have spotted that I've made a mistake here. For some unknown reason, I overlooked painting the mid section of the sound hole on the left. Probably because the crop split it in three and I wasn't paying enough attention as I worked out colours.

It enables me to give you a great lesson that I have learned  - and that is "never panic" 
Leave the area alone to dry and later on we can fix it.

I've seen many people who have made a mistake, seen it almost immediately and then straight away dive in and try to rectify it.
Don't do that!
Pound to a penny the painting will be ruined. Let it dry.  Fix it later. 

Which is just what I'll be doing -and hopefully you'll see a great painting still !

An alphabet painting, in progress

Its been such a long time since I've done a step by step post, that I thought I'd do another! Photo courtesy of Morguefile's copyright free photos.

You can follow along or even paint along if you like!
If you do that and finish it, post it on your blog and I'll link to it :)

Either way, I hope you enjoy the following.

First the pencil drawing of the violin

then mask out the strings. I use W&N Masking Fluid, but any rubber mask will do. Its just to resist the paint when you paint the body of the violin, without any fiddly paint all around the strings !

next I'm painting the bottom right corner, which is background to the violin.
Wet the curved corner first, then drop in some alizarin crimson, some burnt sienna and some payne's grey. Leave to dry.

Last for today, wet the whole violin and then drop in - in a random fashion - some new gamboge.  As you can see, I accidentally touched the corner of the background and it flared a little into the violin. Don't worry if that happens. blot it quickly with a dry brush and leave it be. Once overpainted, it will add character to the violin !
You can see I'm from the "don't panic" school of painters :)

Until next time...

Eastertime..........

Good morning my blogging friends,

Wishing you all an Easter filled with love and happiness.

... and thank you, Lord, for your sacrifice, on the first Good Friday.

The name of this painting, Immolatum, comes from the beautiful Ave Verum Corpus - and it means "Sacrifice"

Have a blessed Easter, all .
xx

The Alphabet Paintings: U

Here we go with another Alphabet Painting.
This is a "U" which means I am nearly at the end of the series, with only five more to go.

Hope you enjoy this latest offering :

Urban Nights

I'm on holiday now for two weeks. We're not going away, but I expect I shall be in the summerhouse and hope to have some paintings to show you!