After the warmup, I was ready to do a proper picture of Amy using the inktense pencils. I started with a decent gesture drawing. There's a nice...
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Warming Up With One-Minute Sketches
After a pencil drawing and a painting yesterday, today it's time to give those inktense pencils a runout. And to have a proper go at some figure...
The Frankenstein-Dracula Variation
After reading Painting By Design by Charles Reid, I felt ready to attempt my first watercolour portrait. It started off as the world chess...
The Trio
This one has been brewing for a month or so and I've now got it out of my system after buying some decent paper for pencil drawing (and possibly...
Painting By Design, Charles Reid – Book Review
This 144-page paperback is one of those books that's difficult to categorise. The title and subtitle on the front page make it sound like it's all...
Strengthen Your Paintings With Dynamic Composition, Frank Webb – Book Review
Now this is interesting. I just assumed that all books on composition were going to be similar, covering the same sort of stuff. The only book...
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
Today's painting is dedicated to the recently departed Sir Alan Parker, who directed (as well as many other films) The Wall, a film featuring all...
Landscape Artist Of The Year 2021
I've had an amazing day today as a wildcard at Landscape Artist of The Year at a mystery location. The first couple of hours painting were quite...
All Roads Lead To Lady Churchill’s Rose Garden
This post was written on 30 July 2020 but is only being released now that the program has aired. Now, this is more like it. Not that I was ever...
Lady Churchill’s Rose Garden, Chartwell
This post was written on 30 July 2020 but is only being released now that the program has aired. I've had an amazing day today as a wildcard at...
The Rose & Crown, Hartlip
First the news. I will be heading along to filming of Landscape Artist Of The Year in a couple of days as a wildcard entry. That's why I've been...
Life Drawing For Artists, Chris Legaspi – Book Review
This is a 176-page paperback and one of three books on figure drawing that I got for my birthday. I tell you, those other two are going to...
Stephen Hawking Reading The Guardian
Ok. Time to try out the inktense pencils properly. I had two gos at doing a painting of a young Stephen Hawking reading The Guardian. The idea...
Inktense Pencil Swatching
It's looking grim outside, so I thought I'd try out those inktense pencils. It's hard to make a mess with these, so I think I’m OK with them in...
Painting Expressive Landscapes, Carole Robson – Book Review
On the face of it, this is a very similar book to the Jane Betteridge in my collection. It has artwork like that in the Ann Blockley books but...
Palette Cleaning And Setup
Actually, my sister messed up and ended up buying me two of those Winsor & Newton Professional 24 half pan palettes. So I've thrown away my...
En Plein Air Watercolor, Ron Stocke – Book Review
With all this painting I'm currently doing out and around the villages, I thought I'd start my birthday reading with this book. It's 128 pages...
Birthday Stash 3 of 3: New Books
Two more books just arrived in the post. That makes eight in my birthday stash and there may be a ninth on the way in a couple of weeks but I...
Birthday Stash 2 of 3: 24 Winsor & Newton Professional Halfpans
More birthday stash. This was from my kid sister. A tin with 24 watercolour half pans. I've talked in a previous post about how I wouldn't buy a...
Birthday Stash 1 of 3: Inktense Pencils
It was my birthday yesterday, and there was some stuff in my stash that I need to show off here. First up is this set of inktense pencils, which...