Sunday 22 May 2016

Step by Step Through a Painting: 'Freesias and Vintage Tea Cup'

I just wanted to show how I created the painting ‘Yellow Freesias and Vintage Cup’ from the set-up shown on the left, in stages. It actually took me about a week to complete it.
Step 1 I always work on gessoed mdf as I like the hard surface, and I start off by applying a thin acrylic burnt sienna ground as I don’t really like working on white. This takes about 10 minutes to dry, then I make a rough drawing of the subject in front of me in pastel pencil or thinned oil paint. Then I get going on the flowers – the most important thing is to get them done as quickly as possible as they soon change! I use warm and cool yellows mixed with a little purple in some areas (purple tones the yellow down), raw umber and rose madder for the subtle tones of the flowers.
Step 2 As you can see, I’ve just about finished the flowers, but if they don’t change I will keep working on them throughout… I’ve painted the satin cushion cover in the background using Paynes Grey, Raw Umber and Yellow, to make a sort of greenish blue. I’ve also made a good start on the body of the jug. I mixed a combination of ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow, cadmium red and titanium white to make a creamy colour for this.
Step 3 I’ve painted the bodies of the jug and the cup and saucer. It’s best to get the basic modelling of these forms correct before adding pattern on top. I’ve also taken a good look at everything and realised the jug was too wide, so I’ve changed it. And I’ve changed my mind about the background. I didn’t like the severe line of the bottom of the cushion cover going across the back so I’m going to have the cloth going over it instead. I’ve made a start on that here.
Step 4 I’ve put in most of the doiley underneath. Now it’s getting fun because I can start putting the patterns on the jug and cup with a fine brush! I just added a bit of shine on the cup too as I couldn’t wait! (You’re supposed to do shiny bits and highlights right at the end).
The finished painting! Sorry about the colour differences in this picture – I used a scanner so it’s more accurate than the photos I took for the other steps. As you can see I’ve finished all the patterns on everything now, and put in all the highlights on the cup and saucer. I hope you enjoyed seeing the steps I went through to create this painting!

Saturday 21 May 2016

A Painting Journey

My name is Angie Wood and I live on a narrowboat on the beautiful Oxford canal. And I’ve got to that stage in life where I know what I really love to do. And what I really love to do is to paint. I think it started from childhood when I was given my first set of ‘painting by numbers’, and that’s also the reason why I’ve always loved oil paints in particular… the smell, the buttery texture of the paint, the vividness of the colours. I’ve always sketched a lot, and in the past few years have done a fair few ‘pet portraits’ as commissions, but generally found working from photos a bit tedious because I couldn’t say I was really learning much about painting. So then I decided to have a go a doing a ‘painting a day’ from life instead of photos. (Look this phrase up on google – you’ll find there are lots of people doing it). I would do an onion, or an apple, or a lemon. This was fun, but I wanted to go a bit further with the paintings, so I’m currently doing a ‘painting a week’ and hopefully making something a bit more resolved. So at the moment I’m painting and painting, trying to learn as much as I can, because however much you learn, you never really get there! You’re welcome to join me on my journey!