Two life drawings

Charcoal and Conte chalk drawings, drawn at the Stamford Arts Centre, Rutland.

A new perspective

Sometimes it's good to get a new perspective. For this drawing I sat on the floor in front of the easels. In pencil in sketchbook. Lots of stumping with a tissue. Bless you. Thank you.

Portrait drawing - sanguine

Our life model was a no-show this week, so by popular demand a member of the drawing group agreed to be a portrait model. I think you can see why we wanted to draw her. Drawing was done using sanguine conte chalk, white chalk and charcoal pencil. On green paper which is great for portraits. I finished this at home, which is risky, but it had to be done.

Life drawing - chalks

Life drawing at the Stamford Arts Centre. In black and white conte chalks, with a bit of black and white pencil, on blue Ingres paper.

Life drawing

Life drawing using Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth Gioconda black pencil (No.3) on Ingres paper. Smudged with tissue.

Life drawing

In charcoal on white Ingres paper. Drawn at the Stamford Arts Centre. Bit of German expressionism here. I swear her neck was really that long. Click to zoom.

New drawings

A couple of new drawings from the Stamford Arts Centre life-drawing class (man with tattoos). There is a good pastel drawings exhibition there at the moment. I'm tempted to buy.

Pastel portrait

We had a colourful girl as a portrait model at this week's life drawing group at Stamford Arts Centre. I had to get the coloured chalks out again. Drawing is using conte pastel sticks, with a touch of black pencil on green Ingres paper. I used a rolled up bit of paper (tortillion) to blend colours. This was drawn over two sessions of one hour. Click to zoom.

Pastel portrait

Portrait in Conte pastel sticks, drawn at the Thursday evening life drawing group in Stamford Arts Centre.

Issuu publication: Life Drawings

Open publication - Free publishing - More miketoddart

Issuu publication: Figurative Paintings

Another online publication, this time of my figurative oil paintings. I must say I'm impressed with Issuu.

Open publication - Free publishing - More oil paintings

Issuu publication of Still Life Paintings

I've been playing around with the Issuu online publication site. You can turn pdf documents into attractive presentations. For free! Here's one on my Still Life paintings.

Open publication - Free publishing - More still life

Stamford Life drawings

A couple of life drawings using brown Conte stick and smudging with finger, then putty rubber to pull back the lights.

Please support the 'save the Stamford Arts Centre bar' campaign. There's a petition and, even better, get down there and use it!

Step by step oil painting : Step 4

This is the final step, which includes glazing and finishing touches. To glaze the lemons I remembered that I had some Schmincke Mussini paint tubes. These oil paints include a resin and a large proportion of the colours are transparent or semi-transparent, making them ideal for glazing. I used Lemon Yellow, Translucent Yellow, Raw Sienna, and Translucent Golden Green, as well my standard Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. To make the glazing medium I used Stand Oil mixed with Liquin Light Gel and Sansador thinner. I also glazed the fabric using Violet with a little Ultramarine. After glazing, I decided to use some Titanium white 'specks' to lift the highlights on the lemons and cloth. This is contrary to what I said earlier on about not using opaque over transparent layers, but this is art so there are no rules! Because this was applied wet-into-wet and delicately placed, it turned out OK. Final stages were to finish the details on the bowl, and then I added a bit more dark to the fabric creases. These final details make the difference if you are going for a trompe-l'oeil effect.

I think the painting is finished, but I tend to leave paintings somewhere conspicuous for a few days to see if something starts to bug me enough that I have to fix it. Overall I'm quite happy with it, but I think it needs some gold in the frame just to lift the edges a bit.

I've painted another picture at the same time as this (click to enlarge). Although simpler I think this is a bit more interesting, which is partly to do with the lower angle of view, and something else that gives this a more metaphysical aspect. Or that might just be me. I didn't originally plan to leave the fabric unglazed, but I liked the grey, so I left it. Vote for your favourite!

Now the paintings have to be left to dry before varnishing. At least 6 months is recommended, but I paint very thinly, so these should be OK to varnish a lot sooner. I will probably leave for a month before varnishing. A temporary varnish (e.g. re-touching varnish) can be used if they need to be exhibited before then.

Life drawing - Stamford

To keep you entertained until another thrilling painting step, I've posted a couple of drawings made at this week's life drawing 'class' in Stamford. It's not really a class as there's no teaching. These were graphite pencil on Ingres paper.

Step by step oil painting: Step 3

Step 3 in this case is working up details on the cloth and the dish (whilst waiting for the lemons to dry). Painting cloth is an exercise in tone. Get the tones correct and it will look like cloth. It's easier to find the tones using a greyscale underpainting like this, which will later be glazed. Start with a range of premixed tones on your pallette and simply 'look and put' the correct tones on the painting. For soft cloth the edges need to be blended. To get the effect of the fabric texture I used a stippling method with a lightly loaded dry brush. Details of the dish were worked up using a small brush. Drawing ovals is quite difficult, so I took a photo of the painting and uploaded this to the laptop. I overlaid the images to see where my drawing was out and then used this info to correct the drawing. I also gave the background a further coat of the burnt umber/ultramarine blue mix. The cloth needs to dry before glazing and further work is needed on the dish. Here's the current painting (click to zoom):

Step 3 Working up the cloth and dish details

Step by step oil painting: Step 2

Step 2 is the lay-in, or first general application of oil colour. With this method the whole canvas is covered in a general way, which is then refined with more detail. An alternative method is to work up detail on small areas at a time (e.g. as used by the Pre-Raphaelites). This requires an accurate underdrawing and can result in sacrificing the whole to the detail, as was sometimes the case with the PRB. I digress.

Since I was going for a glazing approach I used a medium consisting of linseed oil, Liquin Light Gel (Winsor & Newton) and low-odour thinner (Sansador). The Liquin Gel speeds drying (so you don't have to wait ages before applying the next layer) and is good for glazes. The Gel dissolves and mixes with the oil. I also used a white palette (one of the tear-off disposable types) as this shows up the transparent colours. (For the dark background I used a mixture of Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue. This gives a transparent 'black' that is much better than using black paint, which sucks light in. I also used this mixture with Titanium White to give opaque greys that were used for the fabric. For the lemons I used a good Lemon Yellow (Mussini), a semi-transparent Permanent Orange, a little Cadmium Yellow Deep (with is semi-transparent if applied thinly), Raw Umber, Ultramarine Blue and a violet, as well as a bit of the transparent black mix. I probably didn't need all these colours. I also cheated a bit an used a bit of Titanium White to lighten the highlights. This is OK at this stage as I will glaze again, but you should try to avoid white as it will kill the transparent effect. Violet (mixed with the 'black' mixture) was used for the dish.

OK here it is (click on image to zoom):

Step 2. Initial lay-in with oil colours

By the way I was working from the image on the screen on my laptop (set up at the same height as the easel). I have worked from the actual set-up in the past, and this is probably the best method, however there are drawbacks. The subject has to be lit correctly and consistently, and it can be difficult to also light the painting. The easel has to be set up at the correct height. The subject can change over time (particularly flowers and fruit - lemons are not too bad). Also, as I mentioned, I have manipulated the image on the computer. Anyway my method is maybe not for the purists, so forgive me.

I need to let this painting dry a bit before the next step.

Step by step oil painting: Step 1

I thought I would record progress on a new oil painting as I go along for you good people. To get the subject I set up a still-life in the studio and took photographs. Actually several different set-ups. I then transferred photos to my laptop. I chose what I thought would make a good painting and did some editing in Pixelmator on light levels, cropping, colours etc. I won't show the photo just yet as this would spoil the surprise. I then printed out at the size I wanted (to fit on a 8x10" canvas board).

To transfer to the canvas I traced main shapes from the printout on tracing paper. I covered the back of the tracing paper with compressed charcoal and retraced over the front to leave faint charcoal lines on the canvas. I then painted an underpainting using Acrylic paint. This is really quick and dries almost instantly. It is fine to paint oils over Acrylic and is basically a shortcut. This also means that I have a coloured ground to work on rather than the white canvas. See Figure- Step 1.

Step 1 - Acrylic underpainting

I used a leaf green/yellow/white mix for the lemons (you guessed!) and a grey (black/white mixes!) for everything else. I then added white highlights to the lemons. I plan to glaze over the lemons using transparent oils, so the underpainting needs to be high key (light), as glazing can only darken. Already the painting is taking shape and it would be easy to make big changes (or scrap altogether) at this stage without too much heartache. A trick is to look at the painting from afar. If it already looks good then the general composition and lights/darks are working and you could be on to a winner. I'm happy enough with it. There is sufficient border to take a frame rebate without squeezing the main subject (which is often overlooked when you first start painting). This underpainting could be worked on straight away, but I'm taking a break.

Life Drawing - Stamford

Last week's life drawing at the Stamford Arts Centre. I used a Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Negro pencil. Which is a black wax-based (I think) carbon pencil. It gives good blacks, but is quite difficult to erase. This drawing was more of a battle, but fortunately the paper (Fabriano Ingres) can take a lot of rework. I get this paper from Shepherds in London. It's a laid paper hence the 'stripes' can be visible in the drawing - but I like this effect.

New painting: Hallaton, Leicestershire

Just completed an oil painting (click on image to zoom). This is based on an old B&W photograph of Hallaton that I found in a book about Leicestershire villages in the local pub. I guess the photo was taken around 1900. I was (and am) intrigued by this image. There's something slightly surreal about it that hopefully I've captured in the painting. I've used a very limited palette and given a cold but bright Winter feel. In preparing the painting I visited Hallaton and took a photo in the same place. Not much has changed in 100 years - mainly the appearance of motor vehicles, and the disappearance of the tree in the churchyard. Hope you like the painting. Hallaton is famous for the annual bottle-kicking match.

Hallaton, Leicestershire. Oil on canvas board (2010). Mike Todd

Hallaton, Leicestershire (detail)

Hallaton, Leicestershire. Photograph (2010). Mike Todd

Cottesmore hunt painting

Just completed a oil painting based on a Nico Morgan photograph of the Cottesmore Hunt. Canvas size is 40cm x 60cm. Available for sale soon!

Dancer drawings - Stamford

We had a beautiful model at the Stamford Art Centre this week, who is a professional ballet dancer. She held poses for 30 mins. Drawings below (click for larger image).

Graphite pencil on Ingres paper (c) Mike Todd 2010

White conte pencil on green Ingres paper (c) Mike Todd 2010

Carbon pencil on Ingres paper (c) Mike Todd 2010

Charcoal pencil on Ingres paper (c) Mike Todd 2010

Stamford Life Drawings

Started with a life drawing group based at the Stamford Arts Centre , Stamford, Rutland. This is run by Mike Alabaster of the Welland Valley Arts Society. I've posted a few drawings made with this group.

Oxford v Cambridge

I've visited both the Ashmolean in Oxford and the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge in the past week, and sketched in both. Both galleries supply sketching stools. I enjoyed drawing the armour - a real technical exercise. See drawings below. Click for larger image.

Oxford

Cambridge

Life Drawing

Drawing from a new term at the Richard Attenborough Centre in Leicester.

Charcoal pencil on pastel paper. (c) Mike Todd 2010.

Nottingham Castle Annual Open 2010

I had the good fortune of having a painting selected for the Nottingham Castle Annual Open 2010 Exhibition. Here it is on the wall.

It looks a bit small next to two large impressive paintings by Sarah R Key (who I voted for to receive the top prize). It's great to be selected however, particularly as this is a very traditional work, and it's given me motivation to be more ambitious.

Boosted by this I took two paintings to the Backstreet Gallery in Oakham. Both were instantly accepted - which was great! They are moving the gallery to within the tres chic Swans of Oakham (upstairs) this week, which should provide greater footfall as they say.

The Nottingham Castle exhibition is on until 7th March.