Something New: Last Week in the Studio

Last week I got stuck into a new and different working procedure, I usually work very freely, I do not plan my images and I work out any problems on the painting surface itself.  In an attempt to mix things up and work out of my comfort zone I decided to prepare an image in Pixelmator (macs photoshop) and grid up the image in order to get the proportions spot on, a procedure my good friend Lisa does for her images.  My thirst for knowledge and my need to better my skills has made me decided to investigate the folds in fabric and attempt to paint a realistic study of fabric, something I have not done before. The birds in my paintings of late have been dressed in vintage garments and I thought that it would be a fantastic exercise to increase my ability to paint cloth.  Here are some photos of different arrangement of a cloth. I think they look like roses!

I chose No. 6 to paint, though the decision was very difficult, which cloth image would you have chosen?  Below is some images of me sketching the image up. I got some coloured prints done in different sizes to use as references. Usually I paint on the desk in front of my computer, looking directly at my reference images on the computer screen. This image I'm working on is 60 x 60 cm and far to big to work on in front of my computer.

Below a painting I started a while ago and am keen continue this week. I'm hoping that the knowledge I gain from the cloth study painting will enhance my ability to paint the cloth in this image.

My heat gun decided to stop working last week, which put a spanner in the works and I was not able to continue working on my encaustic paintings. Hence my pursuit on the cloth study painting, I did not want to waste a moment on moving forward.  I took the broken heat gun back to the store today and got it exchanged for a new heat gun of a different brand (which I'm going to call Kermit because of its colour). Kermit seems to work a lot better than the other one, I like the away I can control the heat and fan settings on the new gun.

Also I went to the library and borrowed a few books last week, This one on encaustic painting I particularly enjoyed reading, and it gave me all sorts of ideas! I'm keen to incise lines of wax like on page 31, I got a razor blade for scrapping back when I was at the hardware this morning and I'm going to be doing some experiments this week.

Wishing you all a productive week!



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