Speed Work & RBA

I have my sister here from South Africa at the moment but managed to do some painting over the last few days.

But first I want to say thank you for the lovely comments & emails I've had for my new website thank you!! Really pleased.

It's funny how things I set for my students often help me in different ways. I have started planning for the next term of work for them - looking at simplifying, paint aplication, tonal shapes...without fussing with detail too quickly.

What you do is draw out 8 boxes 2.5-3" square and then do a mini painting in each no longer than 10 minutes! It's tough, because it's still a propper painting with all the same  elements involved.
For me it's helping to really hone my observation skills and translating it quickly onto a 2D surface. I want to speed up the time it takes to do a painting outside and this is an excellent way of practising for that. The idea I developed from Carol Marines Daily Painting book.
There is no time for procrastination of the hard areas, no time for day dreaming or being distracted! Just pure focus and a determined mark making, really helpful. I hope my students will find it useful too.

I did the apples first experimenting with moving it around, and as it's small there's no loss in messing up a big investment of a painting to try things out. I worked on paint application thick and thin, especially numbers 6 & 7. You can see how much I improved from the beginning to the end. Painting the apple once and then doing it again it's surprising how much you remember and do it more quickly, like learning the subject by doing a sketch before you start painting. If I changed the set up a little like turning the apple around, it slowed me down again.
I then tried a cermic pot, which was harder, I liked the apple shape better but the colour of the pot was nice! Also did it a bit bigger 3" square and 12 minutes long.

Other news....
I entered the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) Open Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London and have been selected for the first round! I have to take the painting below in January and they will decide if it makes it into the exhibtion. All things crossed :-)

Charity 'Pop Up' Exhibition

Today I did a one day exhibition of my paintings for a friend and student of mine Kim. She held it in her home with a coffee morning in aid of the local cancer hospice (Phyllis Tuckwell.) 
I took all of Kim's paintings down and put up mine! They suited her lovely house.

She raised over £500 and I was able to contribute to that as I sold a good few of my paintings :-) Always exciting to see them going to new homes! A good day but exhausting.

Oil Painting Workshop Results

The first set of paintings were done on Tuesday by my Farnham class, we worked on tonal values using just two colours of Raw Umber and White. 

We made a strip of 7 graduated tones from light to dark trying to keep each step as even as possible. Squinting eyes to see the tone more easily and to check the strip for any big jumps, then adjusting when needed. 

Next stage was using the mixed 7 mixed tones for the still life, we also looked at composition eg placement on the board, scale, cropping, and paint application how much paint to use!

The second set is the class I taught today, in Haslemere same subject. I am so pleased with both classes results and how much they've improved :-)

Summer Workshop no.2 at Frensham Little Pond

We had a lovely day yesteday at Frensham Little Pond. A good spot to draw although we were lucky it wasn't raining, the wind was wipping up from the water and quite chilly. 
My students worked really hard on drawing what they saw, ready to use the information in September for oil paintings. Some had never drawn outside so a new experience, which can be quite dawnting. 
We broke it down firstly small, quick thumbnails to work out the composition and subject matter.

And then a larger more careful line drawing with tones noted down on it, using a scale of 1-10, 1 being the lightest tone you'll see and 10 the darkest. This is helpful when painting it later.

Finally a tonal drawing not using any outlines, just blocking in the basic shapes.

It was great to be outside with my students and them getting stuck into it! They said it gave them confidence to be drawing outside as they were in a group and not so likely to be singled out!