30 December 2008

If you were wondering about Cat attack plans, this clip says it all!!!

Fruit & Veg

Fruit and veg in colour! Not very inventive but the latest project insisted!

Cat

My Cat is very patient!
I say this because her meal times do tend to be rather erratic. Quite frequently (I'm ashamed to say!) I am often so engrosed in drawing or painting something that she gets fed up meowing at me asking for food and instead resorts to just siting as near as possible to me, giving me The Stare (you know the one!) until I suddenly notice her and realise its hours since she had her last meal!!
I'm sure this quick sketch doesnt do her justice but since someone asked about her I thought I would post this in recognition of her resigned and continued patience during the day!
I will add however, that her impatience for her breakfast is legendary and she continues to think up new attack plans every day!

23 December 2008

17 December 2008

Christmas cheer!!
Art by Ange © 2008

15 December 2008

12 December 2008

10 December 2008

The Kiss

Colour (or at least trying!)

Finally I'm onto the colour section of m OCA course! At long last! First attempts arent looking too wonderful, but practise makes perfect, and in my defense I've never really used pastels in quite this way. So laugh all you will but you wait....one day you'll have to pay an absolute fortune for a Mullins! (hah...I wish!)
Some initial pastel colour mixing practise
An exercise, again focusing on colour mixing trying to get as close as possible to the actual objects true colours.....


err...yeah I do so wish! Its by Edgar Degas and I think its just fantastic!

30 November 2008

What a weekend!

Its been a full-on weekend.
Friday night was spent at the city theatre watching an American version of The Full Monty! A gang of us got together, 8 all told, as a surprise birthday treat for a friend and it was just great watching the stunned expression on her face as one by one we met up in the theatre lounge! The Full Monty! Well what can I say that probably hasnt already been said many times before. To some degrees it had that hen-night type atmosphere, especially as 95% of the audience was of course groups of women, but that cast did a magnificant job, loads of suspence, some poignant moments but above all, howls of laughter were heard all through the performance!And yes, hats were bare'd for a split second, right at the end, but it was done in such as way that it wasnt crude and you really didnt see anything anyway!

After the performance we trooped off for some nosh at a local restaurant, pizza and pasta and the like, followed by a selection of extremely naughty chocolate somethings, sticky toffee stuff and of course ice cream and cream to round it off! The coffee was almost an after thought! (I could almost feel those pounds pouring on my waist!)

Saturday morning arrived, somewhat blearily I hasten to say, and I hurried off to the train station, picking up a friend on the way, for a sinful shopping trip to York. I say sinful because I'm sure you guess that not that much in the way of Christmas shopping actually got done! I could add that this was purely down to the fact that there were so many people there that actually getting into each shop was a small feat in itself, however it would be more accurate to say that refreshment stops were the true reason! Some very nice glasses of Rioja were sampled and thoroughly enjoyed throughout the day. Our excuse for this over-indulgance?.......it was bitterly cold! At one point I thought someone had snapped off my nose and the painful act of breathing in freezing cold air all day needed some tough remedies! We did get a bit of shopping done so at least I can, hand on heart, say it was a Christmas shopping expedition after all.
We rounded off the day in the Lendel Cellars, a great and historic bar on the edge of York centre.
A truly great time was had!

05 October 2008

A bit of fun with one of my OCA projects. A break from figure drawing definitely!

As its rained all day, my escape from the dreary ............

But I couldnt leave it floating on the page after all! ...........

Just a bit of fun, which I got totally emersed in, listening to some great music and all in all I had a great time!

27 September 2008

'Figuring it Out'

I've spent today in Barnsley, South Yorkshire attending an art workshop at the OCA's head quarters. After a 4 1/2 hour round trip and lots of sketching all day, I'm shattered, but I'm thrilled with the day's result.

Having left home about 7am and after a rather stressful and foggy trip north, I arrived early for a change (wonders will never cease I hear you say!) After the normal introductions to the other 5 students our tutor talked through the use of backgrounds and foregrounds in our work, the use of light and tone and other such important aspects, all of which help to achieve a more 'complete' image, which was really the subject of the work shop after all.

Then it was off to work. We were lucky to be working with an excellent model, whom I became more and more impressed by as the day wore on. No flinching, twitching, itches, in fact no movements at all! In fact we all agreed that as the time flew by for us we even forgot the model was a living person and suddenly an hour would have gone by before we were called to a halt and still no hint of movement from our model!

Our tutor gave us some good tips and ideas for working sketches, a sore point for me as I'm a real failure in this aspect, but boy did I find them useful and now I understand their value. The course I'm currently doing is always rattling on about working some prelim sketches before attempting a new peice but of course I know better! Well I do now.


Of course there were many more sketches than the few I've published here and although these have no real merrit they at least give you some idea what I'm talking about.

So then we tried our hand at the first 'longer' study with the model still in the same pose as that used for our sketches, but this time we were encouraged to look at various sections of the figure rather than the whole.
I loved doing this!

There was never any emphasis on us to get it lifelike, just looking at the shapes created by the model, the clothes, posture and then to incorporate some background contrast (the model had a black curtain behind their chair)
After this some longer sketches came along, punctuated only by some lunch and debate on techniques, styles and abilities!

My favourite is the 'blue' one. Although none of them are perfect by any means (lets face it the proportions are too far off track to be anywhere near perfect) but somehow even with this fundamental problem I htink they have feeling, depth and even movement and thats why I'm so chuffed with them. Of course I'll keep working on my abilitiy (or lack of!) to get the proportions 'right' so to speak, but in the meantime its important to me to keep on enjoying what I draw and that to me means the finished peice must have something about it that gives me a spark or two whenever I look at it.

Our day came to a close as we finished with some experimental techniques and a bit of fun. My favourite was the amateur printing technique. We took a piece of clear perspex and holding it high and directly in front of front of us we used an oil pastel to trace the outline of the model directly onto the perspex. Then reversing the perspex we drew over the lines with black paint. Having lightly misted a peice of paper with water we then placed the painted side of the perspex directly onto the damp paper, thus transferring the black outline of the model. It was fun but more than that it really showed the perspective and fore shortening of the models outline.
This may not look much, but with some imagination this result could be worked on even further and I think it could end up as something quite good.

So that was my day! Hope yours was as interesting and rewarding!

17 September 2008

A visit to Great Dixter

Last weekend I visited the gardens at Great Dixter with my sister and niece. We were extremely fortunate to have the sun beaming its rays all afternoon and it made for a truly relaxing time of meandering, checking out the the garden, the amazing planting which were full of stunning colours, along with some wonderful architectural planting and excellently kept paths and topiary.
The bees, butterflies and other wildlife were out in force and like us they were making the most of the wonderful sunshine.



The variety of planting was just great and although I am certainly no expert, it definitely seemed more adventurous than some gardens I've looked around. There seemed to be much more structure in the selection of plants used and I was pleased to see some very architectural planting amongst some old favourites.
An extremely pleasurable day and I must mention how nice it was to enjoy the day with both my sister and 6 1/2 yr old niece! Thank you

11 September 2008

I dont 'alf ache!

As I'm turning over a new leaf, I recently decided to rejoin my local sports centre, use the gym and enroll on a few classes. Last night after work I actually enjoyed my induction at the gym and tonight I went to a Pilates class.

Dont I just wish I looked as fit as her!

But no... I am not so fortunate! Its over a year since I've done any exercise, let alone push my resisting body into un-natural poses and shapes. In fact I barely managed to keep up with the routines and found myself feeling very silly and awkward as everyone else made the routines look so effortless!

Me rapidly walking away from the class....just kidding!
But seriously, I am fortunate to be average in size and weight and not have too many problems keeping the excess weight off and I'm looking forward to more gym tomorrow night. But thats probably because I know I've got the weekend off to visit family.

03 September 2008

Great News!

I have been fortunate enough to have one of my pieces of work selected for an exhibition being held at Birmingham's NEC in November!
The Open College of Art (OCA) has been invited to exhibit their students work in the entrance of the show for the second year running. My peice (see picture below) of the woman face, done in watercolour and charcoal will be amongst them!
I'm sure everyones work will be of the highest of standards and I feel really chuffed that my work has been accepted. You never know, it may sell, in which case I will be doubly chuffed!

31 August 2008

Mission accomplished!

Very pleased with this, general opinion of those that have seen my drawing next to the photos I was given to work from, have all agreed its a good likeness. Result!



30 August 2008

commission


I've been asked to do a pencil drawing via a work colleague, of a freinds son and so far it's a nightmare! This is the third attempt, only partially complete, but fingers crossed it will actually end up being a fair likeness. I'll post again when its finished.....


some other pieces this year

Charcoal on watercolour (sold)

Charcoal on watercolour (for sale)


Pencil

abstract...

Acrylic on board, approx 30cm x 30cm

..... a very new experience! And I love the result! True, it might not be worthy of exhibiting but I've hung it in my flat to remind me of all the bright colours around and to NOT take the creative experience too seriously!


The cat was an idea I adapted from a valentine card I received (yes, an anonymous one!) and didnt want to chuck it out but what to do with it? So having come across it again recently it gave me the idea to do my own version. I couldnt quite decide on the background so I just went with slapping on the paint.



14 February 2008

something new.........

I confess that this is just another 'first' in the long list of firsts that I'm determined to try out 'one of these days'. So here I go! Welcome to 'my page' where I intend to write about everything and anything, just as I'm sure many others here already do. So why add my voice? No doubt you'll have a better answer to that than I do, so I'll leave it for you to tell me!
Its another day in February, nothing special about it other than I've spent all of it so far in bed. Thats with a tissue practically and very nearly constantly stuffed up my nose, cough mixture to hand, paracetamol conveniently close, excessive amounts of cups of tea by my side and Cat curled up by my feet. Whats more I have to go to work later to sort out the 'bits' that other people cant. Perhaps I should'nt go but it'll make my life easier for tomorrow.
Enough with the feeling sorry for myself!! Time to turn another corner, strenthgthen the existing rope and 'Get On With It!'
I'm an aspiring artist and assuming you want to hear this, I'm currently dabbling mainly in watercolours , although pencil and charcoal are quite high on the list as well. I'm told I have a certain amount of natural talent so I've decided to try and climb what feels like a monster of a mountain in order to produce paintings that I consider art. Some of my efforts so far have turned out well and I'm pleased, but most are terrible and not worth remembering or keeping. I do keep all of my efforts but I try not to look at them too often! So in all out of maybe 10 paintings I'll probably only produce one painting that I'm genuinely happy with.
Oh yes and ........
HAPPY VALENTINES DAY