Wednesday, October 5, 2016

New Directions Extreme Composition 1

During the 30 x 30 challenge this past September I was impressed by the work of one artist, Dotty Seiter that caught my eye at first because she was working in  B&W. I also was working mainly in charcoal and gray and white pastels. I was impressed with the works she was doing following an online course by Jane Davies,  She was doing the 100 drawings on the bottom of the page.
Following Dotty each day and seeing how her work was developing I decided that I should try one of the courses. This is my new direction. October is a month of holidays and we will only have 2 workshops so I decided to JUMP in.

Lesson 1 Lines and Dancing Lines

These are all just experiments!!!! I am really mainly posting for myself to see my own development in this course.

Did a test sheet of various lines with pencils,markers, pens, charcoal, and crayons to see their marks.
Then we were to do exercises with what Jane calls the wandering line. Letting the line go where it wants, rather intuitively.  Then add another line to compliment or go along with the first, Jane calls this a dancing line.  I many but wasn't getting really what I wanted. Need much more practice
I have a large 11 x 14 " sketchbook with fairly good quality paper. 

click to enlarge

Black oil pastel and lt brown conte stick.  My observation is that it's much too busy. 

click to enlarge

This was done first with a watercolor graphite pencil and then the conte stick... photo came out too faint, but you can get the idea.  The stains are from a work on the next page. This page probably was wet when I closed the book. I like this one much better. 


click to enlarge

We were to make backgrounds with low contrast colors and do the dancing lines on them.
Background oil/wax crayons with some medium. The lines were charcoal stick and 2B graphite pencil.

 Jane works in acrylic paints. I mainly work in oils so I did experiments with my wax/oil crayons and watercolor crayons with medium and without. Not good on plain paper so did a few on heavy brown paper and pieces of cut canvas, 

click to enlarge

Top strip is watercolor crayons with water added on heavy brown paper.
Bottom strip  using my oil/wax neocolor I crayons by Caran D'Ache. with added medium of  linseed oil and turps. Like the watercolor crayons best. I have cut sheets and will do some more. 
The cut canvas trials did not work out too well. I hope to open my paints and do them again,







Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Horsha Painting # 3

This painting was based on sketch # 5.  In the Horsha there is a long wall that borders the area. Behind it a home. I sketch many of the patterns of light that showed up in the late afternoon. This is the end corner of the wall with suggestion of a building.

Although I am basically using a limited palette of grays I am adding hues for variation. Started this at workshop and finished at home. When I returned, Heleni said finished. I am usually a good camper so I stopped.


Oils on cut canvas
30 x 22 cm
Palette Knife



Reference Photo
Probably cropped the left side





Monday, October 3, 2016

Horsha Painting # 2

This painting was based on Sketch # 2 of Leslie's 30 x 30 challenge this past September. I will be doing a series of paintings from my little gray sketch book.


Oils on Cut Canvas
30 x 22 cm
Palette Knife


I did photograph some of the stages, Looking back the first stage was doing OK until I messed it up making the blotches way too dark. I then opened them up by adding a new layer of varying grays. I don't seem to have saved the reference which wasn't of the Horsha near my home,

Stage 1

Stage 2


What works in one medium doesn't automatically work in another!