The Devil’s in my Baubles!

I said I didn’t have time to do Christmas baubles this year, but they were fun last year and quite popular and it seemed a great shame not to have them, so at the last minute… Here are some of a delivery of around 95 empty baubles, all ready to be ‘done’: The calendars are at the printers, the Christmas card has been painted and has gone the same way, I have completed a commission, and the first 3 etchings of this term are all underway. At this point, even though I’m actually on holiday, I am feeling pretty efficient…

While I was looking the other way…

I have just had one of those ‘I can’t believe I just did that’ moments! I have been getting along quite nicely with the Medusa etchings for the somewhat far-sighted 2014 calendar, and in fact I printed the first one today – this is Medusa’s Seedlings, for March probably. It could be February – snake seedlings are quite hardy! It could also be April but I think April Showers  and Medusa under an umbrella would be a good April. So, anyway, I was quite pleased with how this one came out, and I have been working on three plates at…

Life Drawings in Pawlett

This morning’s work: a few life drawings… sorry, short on words this time, but lots of pictures of naked Dave! Pencil and a bit of pastel applied with a cotton bud…

Medusa and the plums

It’s calendars all the way at present:  I have spent most of today and yesterday sorting out the ‘final details’ of the 2013 calendar, making umpteen variations of the file, each one of which needed just one little thing changing, and finally succeeding, on about the fourth attempt, to upload the huge file to the printers. I feel like I carried every little bit across the internet myself by now! Meanwhile, I need to make some definitive decisions abut some of the images for the 2014 etching calendar, before next Tuesday, when I can get on with some actual etching…

Does nonsense plus nonsense make sense?

…this is the question I am pondering tonight. It comes about because I am thinking about the pictures for the 2014 calendar. Yes, you did read that right. Since the summer has been entirely usurped by the 2013 calendar, I have had no time (yet again) to prepare for another term’s worth of etching time, which is every Tuesday for the next 10 weeks or so, starting today.  I hate feeling that I have not given it my best effort, and I generally find it a bit dissatisfying making up pictures on the spot without some kind of little story,…

The blue underpainting

It’s all paperwork for a few days, so, having no artwork to show you, I thought I could still add to my ‘how to do stuff” series of the painting techniques I use. The techniques I developed for myself, so I don’t know if these all these techniques have a proper name – I am simply showing you how I do it! Feel free to leave a comment if you use a similar technique, if you have anything to add, or just if you feel like it! The Principle This technique of blue underpainting forms the beginning of most of…

Finally February arrives…

The final piece of my 2013 calendar is complete!  Not without slight mishap, I might add. I might have called this post ‘try to make each mistake only once’! First of all here is the drawing: I thought I would give it the same gold-and-silhouette treatment as the September one, partly because two drawings amongst a sea of paintings seemed better than one lonely one on its own, and partly because the drawing for March (coming after this one, as you would expect), has very pale figures with a dark background, so I thought it would be a nice contrast….