Lucy Revisited

 

Lucy is growing up so it was time to update her portrait. This is done in charcoal on 12 x 12 inch watercolour paper 140lb cold pressed. I was really pleased with how it turned out overall but especially her mouth and teeth.

I'm once again taking Louise Fletcher's Find Your Joy course this summer and thoroughly enjoying it. I'm a bit behind on the weekly modules due to some other art commitments but since I have access to the material for the year, that's of no concern. What I can see though is how my work this year has been propelled by my participation last year, if that makes any sense. Sort of like a springboard effect. 

Those 'other art commitments' are also an after effect of taking FYJ last year in that it's given me the confidence for putting myself 'out there' more than I ever have as an artist. My mini canvases have been selling at a rate almost faster than I can keep up with - not a bad problem to have LOL. 

Lean on Me

Lean on Me - 8 x 10 mixed media
on 300lb CP wattercolour paper
(C) Susan Langdon aka NUKIART

My sister Kate sent me this charming photo of her friend's dogs Louis and Wilbur a short time ago and asked me if I thought I could paint it. Given that their personalities seem to pour off the page I was eager to give it a go. Sadly, her friend's mother died unexpectedly within a few days of Kate's request; I was even more motivated to do this picture justice.

I took my time, mentally sorting out how I wanted to approach it and then began it last weekend. I had to verbally remind myself to slow down and let the watercolour bits work their magic. My own impatience is often where things go wrong for me with this medium LOL. 

Bit by bit it came together and I am so pleased with the final results. It is scanned, signed and packaged ready to be delivered to its new owner next week. 

Touille - completed

Touille (c) Susan Langdon 2015   watercolour pencil on  8 x 10 inch 140 lb CP Strathmore paper

She is done and soon to be on her way to her new home. 

Touille - updated

There's still a lot to do on this but it's really starting to feel like Tweet looking back at  me! So far this is just dry watercolour pencil. 

What I'm currently working on

Now that I've sorted out my Windows 10 issues with Blogger - seems Google and Microsoft just can't play nicely together - I wanted to post this start to my portrait of Touille for my sister's birthday. So far so good - the face looks like her. Now I just have to get her to sit still long enough so I can get her calico markings right! 

Once the drawing is complete, I'm thinking I'll play it safer and start out with watercolour pencils so that I can feel a bit more in control before I start hitting it with water. 

ETA: Seeing it here I can see I need to make her pupils the same size otherwise it looks like she's had some sort of neuro injury.

Autumn Goodies

We waited to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving until this weekend when the whole family could be together.

Since Nan was making her always delicious roasted stuffed pork, Kate decided to complement this with applesauce made from scratch.  This turned out so tasty that it just had to be presented in a nicely shaped jar. And what is a jar without a pretty label.

Done with watercolour pencil on 20 lb plain white paper, hence the ripples in the scanned picture LOL.

A disaster remastered

This piece evolved over a period of many years. Originally the leaves were to have pink edges and blend into the green - that was the disaster part. I clearly didn't know what I was doing and it didn't work. Hard edges everywhere and no blending LOL.

So I painted the bud and cropped it digitally to use for cards. End of story or so I thought. Jump forward to yesterday when Nan was looking for something to take as a housewarming present for a mutual friend who had been asking about my artwork.

She liked this and asked would I give it a try and see if i could fix it. And this was the result. Not bad considering I didn't have a reference to work from, nevermind I was unsure of what colours I had used. I've cropped it again here in order to eliminate a big magenta blob that somehow had worked it's way onto the original - probably because it had been relegated to the scrap pile in my head LOL.

Nan is off to find a mat and frame so she can take it to dinner at A's tomorrow night. Hope she likes it. Can't deny I'm a bit chuffed with how it turned out, hence posting it here.