Its been a while since added to my diary of trail notes. Between December and now there has been a lot of art making, art seeing and art inspired discussion and I am gradually catching up with posts about some of that. Instead of trying to fill the gap with trail notes from December and January I am going to be doing a series of posts about specific places I have visited and painting adventures I got up to in that time.
For now, I want to look back over this last week to see what I’ve been doing with my artwork. Having said that, I will leave out my paintings and drawings for the current 52 week illustration challenge I’m partaking in until I’ve managed to catch up with that in a separate post.
The first thing I did in the studio was clean off my drawing board. Its mainly been used to store wet paintings and this year I want to use it properly. After cleaning it off I decided to put it to proper use and tip it up. I like it better this way, I can leave any watercolour work on there instead of having to pack it away. I also cleaned up my walls and took down old inspiration. This is my inspiration board at the moment;
I have been working on my first painting for the year (apart from pleinair paintings and illustration challenge works that I will share later). I am entering this one into the Waterbrook Art Prize which is run by my art society, Oatley 101. I need to finish it off today or tomorrow as the paint needs proper time to dry before the end of February. Here’s a step by step of what I’ve done so far, around 9 or 10 hours work I think:
Initial value sketch and palette decision making.
There is still work to do on this one, highlights, hair, arm and hand, trees, plenty to go on with! I’d better get off the computer and go and paint then!
Have a great week,
“The road goes ever on and on”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
Amanda