Week 8 - My painting lacks warmth!

Went to the pottery studio today to do some glazing.
I've put some 'old gold' underglaze on these to pick out the detail in the impressed patterns.
On top of that is sort of a greeny glaze which will mix with the 'old gold' and make a sort of dirty lime green colour (providing it works the same as my test tile!) There is also a bit of translucent white.









The glazes in their unfired state are often really different in colour to the way they turn out. The white is white, but the grey colour is a greeny torquoise!



On my montana painting - I decided that it was a bit to cold looking. I have used almost exclusively cool colours! So I am trying to work a bit of warm brown into the trees. Also that colour naturally sits back. Still a lot of work to do here! I think perhaps I need to go back to my bigger brushes to prevent me from trying to go too detailed. Hm not sure. Definitely more to do.

Week 7 - Forests and craggy mountains

Watching the Winter Olympics has me thinking about craggy mountains and fresh snow...

This week I focused on the Montana painting and worked on 2 different sections:

• Mapped out the light/dark areas of the band of trees - I am not 100% happy with how this looks, the colours are not quite right either, but at least everything is in the right place and I have a good base for the future. It is a complicated part of the picture, there is so much detail in that area and I already know I don't want to duplicate every leaf. At the moment, it is hard to know how detailed to be. I do not want that part of the painting to look like Bob Ross style 'happy trees'.
  
• Mountain in the background - EXTREMELY happy with this. I've been able to show shadows in the snow around those craggy peaks with the pale blue paint. This part of the painting really seems to be 3-dimensional. Unfortunately I am not sure that this comes across in the photos very well :( But trust me, it looks great!
  

It was truly a joy to paint today! I was sad when I had to stop.

Trees:






Mountains:

Week 6 - Fluffy clouds and Trees

Did a bit more painting this week - a second coat on the sky to make the colour more opaque and I also used a wet in wet technique to put in some clouds. The sky will remain quite simple as the mountains beneath it are so busy and textured. I also made a start on the tree section to get some darks and lights blocked in. So far so good...but the trees are going to be a challenge I think!





And at the pottery studio, I experimented with a new technique (well new to me, it dates back to the 1780's) called Mocha which was supposedly developed in the UK around stoke-on-trent. The name is supposedly derived from the word/town of Mecca, where a semi-precious agate stone was traded, which has a similar fern-like vein structure on its surface.

First make a mix of oxide (pottery's version of pure pigment) with an acid: we used vinegar.
Then apply watery slip to some leather-hard clay. Drop the oxide/acid mix into it using a brush or eye dropper and the fern like forms appear like magic! Thank you Gill for the tutorial!





Dragging a tool through the pattern to make a swirl


Other tests with different thicknesses of slip.


A fired mocha bowl with a thin transparent glaze - the pigment used was the same as our tests, a bright blue.



And a few of my pieces came out of the kiln form their first firing.
Test tiles:


3 larger tiles, (sorry the scale of these photos is messed up).
I will need to do some glazing tests next week and work out what sort of glazes I am going to do on them!

All of these have a sort of 'bi-sected' theme to them.

Week 5 - Oil painting is as much fun as I remember

Slightly frightened but feeling ready, it was time to start the Montana painting today. To my surprise, it went well!









So far so good -- it felt quite natural as I was roughly working from top to bottom. (It always makes sense to do that or you drag your hand through your wet paint.) Having my watercolour to refer to was a great help. But I had forgotten how much oil paint/medium and turp smell. I have left the window cracked a bit for ventilation!

And a visit to the pottery studio today as well:

One of my test tiles was out of the kiln - it looks fab (it is dipped in various combinations of things, hence the three stripes). The lighter green looks great, I will be ready to glaze a few tiles next week!



And I did a test tile with some of the dried up slip that I made - the white braid is white clay pressed into the croxton and there are also dark blue spots pressed into the tile. Dark brown slip brushed and squirted on top for a bit of surface texture. The letters are to go with my other set (which was a bit short on vowels)



And I dipped my braid pots from last week in white slip, the smaller one has a drip on the front. Some slip must have gotten caught in the braid - oh well, I might add more slip to these next week. The were too wet to handle any further today!



The bigger one looks great too!

Week 4 - That's a nice watercolour you have there...

Excited!
The watercolour I did this week for the Montana painting went really well - I am so pleased with it!
I have to start oil painting now!





And another productive day at the pottery studio - my 2nd set of braid tiles that I showed in week 2 are out from their first firing. That black slip looks interesting!



And finally - 2 cylindrical pots that I made for me - bigger one is to hold kitchen utensils, the smaller one is for the nail brush and sponge! These need some coloured slip on them - but they have to dry out a bit first. I will have to do that next week.

Thanks for looking!

Week 3 - Pottery

Pottery Day!

I haven't to the pottery studio (Kirkgate Studios and Workshops http://www.ksandw.org.uk/) since before Christmas.

My intention was to go and work for the morning - but I was having such a good time, I stayed all day!

The images are of a series of 'pottery paintings' that I am working on. Many of the potters in the studio focus on making vessels or 'pots' - but I am more drawn to making pictures in clay. No doubt this is due to my background in painting and printmaking.

Once they are glazed and fired - the colours are permanent and they are sort of indestructible. I am used to working on paper and canvas that is very fragile - this property intrigues me...they won't ever fade!!

The braid motif (or 'plait' as they say in the UK) is one that I've only started exploring recently.
I think it has to do with having long hair now...one of the most intuitive things you can do with clay is roll it out into long pieces...

I know most of the followers of this blog will not be familiar with pottery, so I will explain some terminology.

This first picture shows a group that were finished before Xmas and have had their first firing - called a biscuit firing.
I've use Croxton clay here (which is grey in its unfired form) and sort of a pale pinky off-white colour once it has been fired. The white in these images is from a liquid clay called 'slip' that you can apply before the biscuit firing. Slip comes in all sorts of colours - there is also dark brown splattered on there.

The small one is a test tile - so I have something to test the glazes on at the next stage.



These ones have not been fired yet - the dark grey is black slip - relatively new, I don't think anyone else has tried it yet. These are ready for biscuit firing.









These are the ones I did today - the need to dry for about a week before they are ready for the first firing.





Some more in progress!



My colleague at work - she was using traditional terra cotta clay.

Week 2 - Montana Painting Begins

Spent the morning trying to set up this blog - by 11am was fed up, so headed to the studio.

My parents have commissioned me to paint a large scale oil painting for their 'cabin' in Montana. The scale of the building is large so the canvas is large - 1m by 1m40 (56in x 40in) . Scary.
I was initially very excited but now it has dawned on me that I have not done a painting on this scale (in oil or watercolour) for a long time. Did I say it was a bit scary?

So first I decided to tackle that canvas and at least get something on it - the first job was to put the image on. We have been discussing this for some time - so we had our image picked out and had discussed painting style, etc. It is a very pretty mountain scene with Sailor Lake in the foreground. Quite traditional, but I think a nice image with a lot of potential. I've put that on the canvas with the help of a projector...sometimes technology is so great!

The second job was to work out the colour scheme - I want to vamp up the original colours (a la California Expressionism) so I followed the process I have used in the past : I did some preliminary watercolours before starting in with oil. This would also help me get to 'know' the composition, which would allow me to make decisions much more easily as I was painting.

To be honest, I am not that happy with the watercolours - but I guess it is better to be unhappy with a watecolour that took you an hour, than a painting you've already spent 20 hours on?

The first watercolour was was definitely over-worked. Sometimes you have to take things too far before you know how far too far is - if that makes any sense.
The second is better - I'm making some sense of how the trees are 'built' which is important as they run right across the middle of the canvas. I'm happier with the sky colour - a nice cerulean blue. The colours of the mountain in the background are still stumping me. The colours overall are not unified enough. So definitely need to do more work there.

Next step is to get some larger, and lightened printouts of my mountain image and keep going with the watercolours until I am happy - and then we can start in with the oil!

Watercolour 1


Watercolour 2


Mountain image I am working from: