A painting from the archives

The other day I posted a photograph from my archives - one that I used to sell a lot of. So today I thought I would share one of my life drawing paintings. This was done using pastels and I remember my tutor, Fran, pushing me to use the colours of the sarong on her skin, as almost a reflection. I tended to do a lot of my nudes in charcoal and this was the first one I did in pastels. I had THE most amazing time. I felt like I was just touching the surface of what I could achieve. Shortly after this session the classes stopped for a while and then I couldn't make the new term

I really did enjoy creating this study and I hope to join another life class in the not too distant future.

Hope you had a nice evening last night and are looking forward to the weekend. I missed Kirstie's Handmade Britain as for some reason our telly as decided to remove quite a few channels from it's selection....Channel 4 being one of them. Thanks heavens for catch up tv.

Have a great day!

Helen xx

Painting with Sting

Tonight I am painting at long last and listening to Sting. I haven't used pastels in ages and I am having so much fun. I don't mind the messy hands at all - I know lots of people don't like it, but as I am a messy artist anyway, I quite enjoy it.

I have music on, have a lemonade at my side and am painting a picture for the first time in a long time. Happy times.

Off now to carry on so have a great evening! xx

A bit stuck

Well I'm a bit stuck. I randomly started this layered watercolour painting of flowers with a bird, and I wasn't sure where I was heading with it. Just really wanted to see the transparent layers of the flowers over each other, so I pretty much let the painting just flow. And now I am not sure what to do.I feel like it needs to 'pop' a bit more, but then again, it's nice to have soft gentle colours. So I'm debating whether to outline it......it certainly needs something!
So any ideas are well and truly welcome.

Hope you all are having a great day.....I'm glad you enjoyed the Kelly Berkey interview, she really is just the sweetest person.

Helen xx

The fourth one...

A while ago I blogged about producing 4 paintings in a month....I did achieve this (yay!) but the time after has been so busy that I haven't been able to blog about it. So here it is...

I decided to continue using the same scene and this time drew a rough outline of the buildings in pastel, in a colour similar to the colour of the pastel paper.

I then started blocking in the various colours to build up the picture.
I then started to add more details, correcting the lines, adding windows and some shadows.
This painting didn't take long, I would say an hour tops, but it was fun to do.

Looking at it now, there are things I would change, but that is what painting is all about - by doing you learn more than any video or book can teach.....

Have a great day!

Helen