Short Oil Sketch Demo

Today I thought I might post a short oil sketch demo. I am painting the bay at the entrance to Cobh island at low tide. My palette is quite simple as can be seen below..

It consists of alizarin crimson, cadmium red, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium green cadmium blue and sap green. To help with the mix I am using a premixed buff and of course a large amount of titanium white. The underpainting is completed in burnt umber and I am also using a measure of liquin gel to improve the flow of the paint. The surface support is just a piece of waste foamex and the full sketch took about fifty minutes. My camera set up is just a cheap webcam held in place with some clamps.. not a very high quality output but as this is just a sketch you can still get the sense of it.

The camera sits between me and the easel so I must paint around it.. 

but it's said you must suffer for your art and that's the only suffering I intend to do today :)

Below you can see the movie of the work being painted, it has been speeded up by 

six hundred percent as I am aware that the internet is not a place where anyone stays 

in the one spot for long. So be assured it will all be over in about five minutes 

and is relatively painless.

The finished work is here. With this work from the very outset I loaded on the paint, not my usual approach but it seemed to work this for this particular case, also it was a lot of fun.

Entrance to the island        oil on foamex 28cm x 20cm

....and that's it, hope this was helpful or at least interesting for you and as always...

Thanks for looking :)

Pastel sketch of a Cow Skull

  

Charcoal and Chalk Pastel on Canson 46 x 30cm

Having had a bit more time on my hands this last week or so I decided to wander

around my local landscape in search for suitable drawing material. In a nearby woods

I passed this cow skull picked clean by time. I couldn't resist sketching it, as it made 

such an attractive subject, despite its obvious tragic history. 

Thanks for looking :)

Quick pastel sketch

Charcoal and colored chalk on canson 40 x 30 cm

It's been a while since I posted so I thought I might upload this quick sketch of the Gearagh as twilight approaches. Less is more I think for this type of description and it is so tempting to try to accurately portray what you think you can see, rather than the mystery offered by the fading light.

Thanks for looking :)

A sketch in red and black

 Permnent marker and red acrylic on canson  42 x 30 cm

For this work I was trying to reduce the piece to the bare essentials.

The whole work was done with just one permanent blackmarker and

a quick splash of red ink. While the previous animal paintings are 

decorative and reasonably complex to produce, this one I think has more

power in it due to its reductive nature.

Thanks for looking :)

Polar bear

charcoal and pastel on tinted canson  42 x 30

This little sketch started out as just a quick idea where I

wanted to use a minimum amount of color to describe the

image. I was quite pleased with the result. I guess

sometimes a quick sketch like this can have valuable lessons.

Thanks for looking :)

A little bit of life drawing..

Red and white chalk on tinted canson  30 x 25 

Red and white chalk on tinted canson  30 x 25 

Some more life drawing at the fourth floor studios.

This time I am using red chalk. I have used red line

before but not frequently but when placed on tinted paper 

with white pastel highlights it can be very effective.

thanks for looking :)

Big cat

Chalk Pastel and Charcoal on canson 42 x 30

Some while back, until about ten years or so, I used to use only chalk pastels. 

I worked in this medium and nothing else for quite a long time

and then one day abandoned it, hardly ever touching it again. 

In the last few weeks I have been coming back to this medium.

Maybe everything works in a cycle and here I am again, back where

I started. Hopefully with a better and more thorough understanding 

of what makes a good design and how colors can work.

I must admit, it was nice to be back on familiar ground.

thanks for looking :)

Out of its element

Colored chalk on canson 42x30 cm

Today I thought I might try my hand again at chalk pastels. Its been a while, 

but some time back, for ten years or so I used nothing else but dry media.

It was good to feel the chalks in my hand again and it came easy.

I have neglected them for too long in favor of the more forgiving oils.

Perhaps I will do more in the future.

Thanks for looking :)

The Art of Iaido

Disposable pen on recycled cartridge 30 x 25 cm

A quick sketch of the art of Iaido with my favorite cheap pen

thanks for looking :)

Some more sketches from the ruined mill

Returning today I had once again a chance to study some different areas around the ruin..

The first being another roofless building deeper into the trees

 Charcoal and white chalk on canson 40 x 30cm

Charcoal and white chalk on canson 40 x 30cm

The second was a study of one of the now overgrown canals 

used to manage the waters for powering the mill system.. it was 

really enjoyable and quite peaceful.. I must return with oil 

paints as the weather gets cooler.

Thanks for looking :)

Churchyard Cat

Graphite on 150lb press 30cm x 20cm

 Every so often I get lucky enough to travel around the countryside with an 

art group that go by the name of Sceitse exploring different locations 

and their aspects of interest. This last trip was to the lovely seaside town of Youghal.

Always lots to draw on these trips, but what really caught my eye that day was this 

friendly cat happy to pose in the church yard. Unfortunately he wouldnt pose for long 

enough. But I was able to get quite a bit of camera reference from him and work this

little piece up in the studio later.

Thanks for looking :)

A pastel sketch from the island..

Pastel on tinted canson 30cm x 20cm

Another impression from the island of Illauntannig, the island itself is surrounded 

by quite a bit of rock, having only one short beach where a boat can be landed.

Rockpools of course are an endless source of sketch material.

Thanks for looking  :)

Island impressions.. abandoned

Pastel on tinted canson 28cm x 20cm

Another island impression, this one in pastel painted inside an old outbuilding there while standing in out of the wind. The old gas cooker left to decay still sitting under the remains of a huge fireplace.

It made for a nice study and very different from what I would usually attempt.

Thanks for looking :)

Shoreline impression.

Oil on Foamex 25cm x 20cm

Recently I was lucky enough to spend some time on an Atlantic island called Illauntannig

off the coast of Kerry. Four days were spent in the company of 12 other artists on this otherwise deserted outcrop of sand and rock drawing, painting and generally enjoying the beauty 

of it's bleakness.The work above is an impression of the waves as 

they break on its western shore.

Thanks for looking :)

A Six Minute Sparrow

 Here'a a quick little demo of a painting of a Sparrow. The video is sped up here so the whole process can be viewed in six minutes.The surface is foamex and the medium is oil.The video quality is the best I can get using my small face cam. It was positioned right in front of the easel so I had to paint up under it to get this to work.  So while the viewer can see the painting progress the artist was looking at the back of the camera trying not to hit it with the brush, funny but true. For the most part this seems to have worked.

Thanks for looking :)

Small painted bird

oil on Foamex 20 x 16 cm

It's a grey rainy day today outside the studio and there is little sign 

of my winged modeling companions. Hover there is an odd glimpse between

showers. Enough at least, for this study in oil.

Thanks for looking :)

Another Sparrow sketch

Pastel on tinted canson 30 x 25 cm

I managed to get in another quick sketch of my noisy companions.

Once again using the dry pastel and charcoal mix. This one is less detailed

due to the speed of these little guys and even at this level it's mostly from memory :)

Thanks for looking :)

Old Tim fixing the weather vane

oil on Foamex 34 x 27cm

An oil painting of my friend and neighbor Tim as he fixes his weather vane above the chicken coop.

A task for which I was volunteered to help with and payment received by Tim modeling momentarily

on the ladder while I did the sketch. The painting was completed later from reference and memory.

Thanks for looking :)

Guests in my attic.

Recently I have had two pairs of sparrows take residence in my attic, These non paying guests are making quite a fuss in settling into the nests they have built between the ceiling and roof. I can hear them flapping and chirping while I work and every so often I can see their cheeky presence just outside my skylight windows. They make fine drawing models. I thought I might post a speedy pastel process for quickly getting them down on paper.

The first task is to draw the little guy, they are fast movers but sometimes tend to sit and doze on a branch when the sun comes out. So taking advantage of this I quickly work up a charcoal sketch of the bird just focusing on the values and proportions. When I have it down I  spray it with a little artists varnish as I dont really want the charcoal to mix with the upper layers of pastel I will be using later. This short wait for the fixitive to dry is useful too, as it gives me time to start another sketch.

 My next step is to lay in the basic colors, I am using a mix of pastels here and I am just getting an average of the color. As my model has since woken and flown, I am making my color notes each time he passes and lands outside my studio window.

 Once I have made a simple color fill I must then become concerned with detail, for this I am more inclined to use pastel pencils as they are easier control and they work well on top of the colors already laid in. I can take my time at this point as between my models and some photo reference, I'm pretty sure I can get the important details down. 

Finally then I have my finished drawing, I have used some very soft pastels on the top layer.

This has been a pretty fast sketch overall, just for fun.

Thanks for looking :)

Life drawing at the Fourth Floor Studios.

Some more life drawing today at the Fourth Floor Studios.. Sometimes it just does not work, today it just seemed to be stuck, no likeness, proportions out of whack, just about everything wrong. I guess my muse had the weekend off or found something more interesting somewhere else. Whatever it was I was on my own :) So after a few hours frustration and in desperation, I switched to red conte on tinted sheets, rather than my trusty old pencils on bare white cartridge. All of a sudden things started flowing again. I suppose then, it's true, one small change is often all it takes.

Thanks for looking :)