Pencil and paper moments

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Art, Artist and crafter, Artistic moment, Carens canvas and craft My ETSY shop, craftodessey, Heritage Bunnies, Knitted rabbit and Lamb, Mrs. P's Bunnies, Original art, Pencil drawings, Rabbit pencil drawings, Still life, Uniques and original wares

I started Large…A  16 x20 inch mounted pencil portrait…….to give extra detail! Sometimes, as an artist…it’s just nice to touch base with the simpler things in life, like a piece of paper and a pencil! 🙂 Though, the paper is of the exquisite kind – 100% cotton, rough grade 140lbs/300g/sq m which I thinks added a lot of texture to the finished pieces!
Recently, I did a little gift swap with another WP blogger, MRS. P,  From the wonderful craftodessey!
Part of it was for a little requested pencil sketch of my adorable heritage bunny, which Mrs P had insisted I must have (who was I to pass up such an opportunity ???)……….. when it arrived – with a surprise unexpected little companion, knitted Lamb! My little bunny was given to me with a lovely letter telling me about her history. She was sent to be my new apprentice from the Workhouse. If you are new to all of what is going on here?? then a couple of links might help;
https://carentaylor.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/im-in-love-3-3-3-how-lucky-am-i-d/
https://craftodyssey.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/the-story-behind-wallis-russell/

The two little sketches I did for Mrs. P of her lovingly handmade and gifted (to me) knitted bunny, Wallis Russell and Lamb. Which The RM Postie delivered just yesterday as her surprise 🙂

Carried away by the moment – I seem unable to stop at the one I first thought I would do…..After all it is always nice to get an extra surprise!! 😀

….and so the sketches continue 😉
Watch this space for more tiny and large Wallis and Lamb portraits!

‘Poppy duo and Pincushion trio’ – Original 14” x 11” Oil Painting

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Art, Artist and crafter, Artistic moment, Arty, Carens canvas and craft My ETSY shop, Crafty creation, Creative craft, Garden flowers, My garden flowers, Nature, Original art, Original Poppy oil painting, Painting from a photograph, Painting in oils, Photography, Poppies and pincushions, Poppy duo and Pincushion trio, Red poppy art, Still life

‘Poppy duo and pincushion trio’  an Original 14” x 11” Oil painting on canvas panel    
Having spent the last couple of days, moving from room to room around the house in order to ”get straight and tidy’ for the family invasion next week – I finally abandoned my mop and bucket and grabbed my paintbrushes for a rest! This little oil painting has been done with the attempt to soften the background almost as if it’s out of focus allowing the main poppies in the foreground to take their place centre stage. I wanted to try and see if I could imitate, somehow, what photographers do by fading out the background and focusing on the main image. To try and do this I have merely blended blobs of colour without any firm shapes graduating the shades back to give a hopefully somewhat diffused perspective and depth to the foliage. Overall it passed a quiet Saturday afternoon, and, I’m happy with the final look and feel of the little still life scene! I must say, my conservatory window ledge is starting to look very colourful as, the now five canvas boards, are lined up to dry  🙂

A Penchant for Poppies!  – Original 14” x 11” Oil Painting

Cheap crayon creation! My hydrangea and Lavender posy

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Art, Artist and crafter, Artist's rough cotton sheet, Artistic moment, Arty, Caren's creative canvas and craft, Coloured crayons, Crafty creations, Crayon drawing, Creative crafting, Dried flower posy, Flower sketch, Original, Original flower drawing, Playing with crayons, Still life

My hydrangea and Lavender posy crayon sketch is the direct result of being terrorised in my workspace by a huge lurking arachnid! I simply refuse to move any storage boxes to gain access to my painting supplies for fear of disturbing it again!!!!, So, instead, I found a cheap tub of children’s crayons, some heavy duty rough cotton artist sheets, grabbed a seam ripper and played instead…. 🙂
My daughter picked these little flowers from our garden as a birthday posy for me which I have since dried, but still keep on my ledge by the kitchen sink, as the colours tone in so well with our duck egg blue kitchen….a colour it acquired from a previous bored moment!!! ;-/

Playing with crayons whilst hiding out from a huge spider which seemingly enjoys playing ‘Hide and seek’ in my workspace!!! It hides…then seeks me out when I least expect it  ;-/! I have even taken to wearing rubber gloves before putting my hands into my fabric and storage boxes…just in case OH, and of course tucking everything into my high boots for good measure!!!

Cheap crayon experimental sketch stage one…with equipment !
Also, I found it really useful to have an old artist brush handy to flick off the little bits as I drew…I’d quite forgotten how messy crayons can be! I might have removed the excess from my picture but now the tiny flecks of wax crayon seem to be welded to my glass worktop ;-( There’s my next job…hopefully the scraping and squeaky cleaning won’t disturb the big beastie…..

As you can see I used a bit of artistic licence and only drew a section of the original dried posy….I hope the coast is clear to get to my watercolour paints soon…though without moving things I will never know ??? If you hear a loud scream in the distance…You’ll know it is still here!!! :-@

Speed sketching at a still life class

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Burlesque Performer/Model – Still life speed sketching class – 15 minute sketch (Colour added later)

Over the Christmas period it was wonderful having family around though it had meant that in the run up to them arriving, it WAS totally necessary to tidy my art and crafts away, as I mainly work on our dining table, otherwise family mealtimes would have been impossible. This wasn’t a problem at first, though after a few days I really needed something to do in the quiet hours of the day. I am not happy sitting doing nothing really for any period of time, so, off I went rummaging in my art cupboard. Whilst looking for some watercolour paper to do some small line drawings I came across a half used pad I had used at a speed sketching art class early last year, which I had forgotten about. I flipped through it and recalled that I had promised myself to do something from the sketches at some point, maybe now was the time!

From the cupboard I also retrieved some Inktense pencils which I hadn’t used before, so they seemed perfect to try on one of these still life sketches. I had no idea how this would turn out but I placed a few coloured pencil marks here and there over the original sketch, took a deep breath and applied a wet paintbrush over the strokes. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised at the vivid colours as the water seeped over the pencilled inks, luckily I had taken a watercolour sketchpad to the class otherwise this wouldn’t have been a good experiment.

Below are a couple more 5 or 10 minute pencil sketches. It really was intensive at the still life class, I think they wanted gut reaction drawing, you certainly didn’t have time to scale and indeed if you blinked in the five minute poses you had no chance as the model would move to another position as the buzzer rang. It was really fun and a good laugh, mostly by the ladies in the room – we had never heard the men so quiet in a class before – We all thought they were a little intimidated by the pretty model. As we all looked over each other’s sketches after the class it was quite noticeable that most of the men had just drawn a couple of the model’s feathers – not the model at all!! 🙂

5 min sketch still life 7

5 min sketch still life 6

10 min sketch still life 5

10 min sketch still life 3

10 min sketch still life 4

 

 

 

Still Life – “On a Ledge Series” ‘Geranium and Harvey’ – Oil Still Life

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“On a Ledge Series” – Geranium and Harvey!

Today seems to be a day of showing you my art in different mediums. This oil painting was a rerun of the pastel version (compare) Still Life Pastel “On a Ledge Series” – Geranium and Friend Harvey. I can never decide if I like this one or the pastel version more, I think they both have their own appeal for different reasons.

The reasoning and inspiration for this series; Bored and uninspired one day, I stood in my kitchen wondering what I could draw? Whilst wondering I absent mindedly started tidying and rearranging things on the ledge. I’m not one for nice pot ornaments, rather have slightly wacky or weird decorative things around! So, as I now had a disarrayed pile of things I had moved and a clean window ledge – The idea struck me. I could use it as a little staging area for a series of still life pictures!!!

Still Life – ‘Dewdrop on the Anemone’ – Pastel Still Life

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‘Dewdrop on the Anemone’

In the corner of my gravelled garden, I had a little patch of anemone flowers nestling in with a bunch of stray Candy tuft, which I think I can thank the blackbirds for! The birds see no problem in rearranging my garden plant theme in the search for worms and the like.  Anyway, the whole reason for this pastel drawing was the tiny dew drops which seemed to be floating on the budding flower. They seemed to be defying gravity on the curved petal. After observing them I quickly went for my camera, thinking all the time “I bet they have rolled off. when I get Back!” But no, They were still there!! I took the shot, checked the image on my camera, looked back at the flower… and they were gone. They had waited just long enough to be captured for eternity!!!

Still Life – “On a Ledge Series” – ‘Sleepy Monkey and Wooden Duck – Watercolour Still Life

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Art, Art inspiration, Artistic moment, Arty, Bored moment, Children's art, light and shade, On a Ledge Series of paintings, Original Sill life, Original still life watercolour, Reflections in watercolour, Series of Still life paintings, Sleepy monkey and wooden duck, Still life, Wacky art, Watercolour illustration, Watercolour painting

‘Sleepy Monkey and Wooden Duck’

Above is another in my series of “On a Ledge” paintings. As random things go that live on a window ledge I must say I do like Sleepy Monkey, this painting is the second he got to pose for!  The light, shade and reflections in this picture worked surprisingly well in the watercolours. As the main focus was centred around painting art for children rooms’ in this series, I have been surprised too by the number of adults who have shown much interest in them.

Here is how the idea arose for “On a Ledge Series” for those who have not seen others in the range

Bored and uninspired one day, I stood in my kitchen wondering what I could draw? Whilst wondering I absent mindedly started tidying and rearranging things on the ledge. I’m not one for nice pot ornaments, rather have slightly wacky or weird decorative things around! So, as I now had a disarrayed pile of things I had moved and a clean window ledge – The idea struck me. I could use it as a little staging area for a series of still life pictures!!!

Poppies – ‘Poppy Perfection’ Oil on box canvas Poppy

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‘Poppy Perfection’

In this painting the main thing I wanted to convey to the canvas was the transparency of the the petal with the sunlight shining through in the early morning. The reason I titled it ‘Poppy perfection’ was that I caught this flower on photograph at the pinnacle of its existence. It really was a good year in my garden for poppies (See also my other paintings of poppies especially Oil Painting – Still Life – ‘Poppies on Parade’ which was a collection of flowers from my garden) But I still think this was the most perfect and beautiful poppy I think I have ever see. As if to highlight that fact I painted the background quite abstractly to show the comparison. Whilst the background flowers in my opinion needed to be there for the composition of the still life I didn’t want their distraction from the main focus of the Poppy!

Still Life -“On a Ledge Series” – ‘Sleepy Monkey and Wooden Ducks’ – Oil Still Life

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“On a Ledge Series” – ‘Sleepy Monkey and Wooden Ducks’

Here we are again at that tidy window ledge, with more still life exhibits! The two ducks I pinched (Borrowed) out of my Daughter’s bedroom where their normal duty is to act as bookends and the monkey was from my Son’s room.  He had a jungle theme many years ago.  This particular still life was done in oil paint, though in the future I will post another of Sleepy Monkey and Wooden Duck (Only one duck next time!) painted in watercolour.

Looking again at this picture, I love how tidy my kitchen worktop is!! Maybe I should do more in this series!!! Below is an explanation of how this set of paintings was born for anyone who hasn’t seen others in the series.

Bored and uninspired one day, I stood in my kitchen wondering what I could draw? Whilst wondering I absent mindedly started tidying and rearranging things on the ledge. I’m not one for nice pot ornaments, rather have slightly wacky or weird decorative things around! So, as I now had a disarrayed pile of things I had moved and a clean window ledge – The idea struck me. I could use it as a little staging area for a series of still life pictures!!!

Poppies – ‘Poppies in the Wild’ – Oil painted Poppies

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‘Poppies in the Wild’

This oil painting was done from a collection of photographs I had taken of poppies growing in my garden. I selected little bits from the photographs and created this picture, almost in the same way I created by oil painting of ‘Poppies on Parade” also to be found in this ‘Poppy Section’.