For my first artistic venturing into something of my own initiative I used Google Images to find something new to copy. I was so used to copying the tutorials and did not feel 100% ready to make something up from nothing that I found a nice cake image and copied that:
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| A cake from Google Images |
I was pleased with the cake, I wanted to leave it plain and just shade it as I love pencil shading so much, but I filled it in with coloured pencils. After this I found a mug 'in the flesh' and copied that from real life:
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| A mug from real life |
After this I decided I would start to try out a range of mediums.
OIL PASTELS:
I drew a nice blu-tit using cheap oil pastels, I believe I coped this quickly from a Christmas card:
My biggest triumph was to take a bunch of bananas from the kitchen and draw it with the oil pastels. It actually didn't take long at all and turned out very well. I was really pleased at having transcribed it from 'the flesh' onto paper:
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| Oil Pastel Bananas from Still Life. |
ACRYLICS:
At this time I really got creative and started to try all sorts of mediums. This flower I started with acrylic but I didn't really finish it:
This Parrot was an interesting exercise in using acrylic with a different style. This was done using canvas paper:
And then I really decided to try something really different using inspiration from reference pictures found on the internet and try my own picture using canvas paper and acrylic. I drew an interesting sun and grass using different shades of yellows and oranges and let it dry.
Reference pic:
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| Reference Pic that I found I liked |
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| Stage 1 painting |
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| Stage 2 painting |
And then I added some dark spooky trees:
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Stage 3 Painting.
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These were interesting results. I stopped at this point. There are some other exercises I did with acrylics into a scrap book, lots of small paintings daily as exercises that I thoroughly enjoyed but I don't have any of my old art as I got rid of it all when I quit the first time. I really fell in love with acrylic paint but it was quite an ordeal. Oil pastels I found harder, I needed several stumps for blending but they were a real achievements. I did a couple of 'proper' oil pastel pictures from a technical book, a sunset over a city and a huge vase of flowers. They were a good learning curve. I did not finish the vast of flowers:
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| Vase of flowers in expensive oil pastels using rag paper and an art board. |
The above vase of flowers in oil pastels was really fun to work on. I enjoyed the pencil sketch of it and then filling it in with the oil pastels. I have to admit I got into the art materials and forked out on some really good oil pastels for £60 and they were great to work with. I never finished this.
CAMEL OIL PASTELS
Even though I had these expensive oil pastels I found on You Tube all these tutorial videos for art with CAMEL oil pastels from India. The pictures were awesome!! At first I attempted one with my own pastels:
Again, I never finished this but was getting to grips with the idea of perspective. I had gone at this stage from not being able to draw anything, to shading and now pictures that had some sort of depth! I decided that because the tutorial videos reference specific camel shades I would get some camel oil pastels and use them. They were only £11. After this I attempted another one, again incomplete but better:
It was so much more fun with the camel pastels because they told you the exact colours. The shading was working and the trees actually looked like they were in the distance! I decided that I really like oil pastels, it was time to try soft pastels.
SOFT PASTELS
My first attempt with soft pastels I was feeling quite enthusiastic and confident so I thought about what I would like to draw, the things I like and I thought - I like standing stones. I looked for some reference pictures and found some images of standing stones. What I did at this point, I did not copy the picture identically, I instead moved the stones about and changed things up, added stones from other pictures. I only have left some images of the finished result, I loved it. I don't have it anymore though. Below are the reference photos I used:
And here is my original drawing in soft pastels, the first time I had used soft pastels:
At the end I sprayed the picture with a fixture. My favourite bit was the shadows:
Drawing what I like seemed to really work and it was after this that I drew several pictures of lighthouses. I found that the soft pastels made me wheeze unfortunately, I had not long had lung problems and did not wish to aggravate it so did not use them anymore after that. I don't think I used the oil pastels for a while either but went back to acrylics. This became my "LIGHTHOUSE" phase where I decided to paint one lighthouse after another. Sadly, I don't have any photos of the lighthouses I did, just one on a canvas that I copied from Google:
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| My acrylic Lighthouse copy |
I considered this my first success, I was able to use the paint carefully especially at the top and got the shading under the roof too. Very pleased with this. I no longer have it after my "quitting" cull as I said, my dog passed away in 2016 and I threw everything and quit, I did not want things reminding me of the atmospheres of those times or the past, it was such a difficult time. It's sad because after the above lighthouse and several different ones, after that whole journey of shading, different mediums, tutorials, practise, understanding, I took the plunge and began a picture that truly represented me as a budding new artist. I drew a lighthouse from our local area - Shoreham, but I made it my own. I made my own horizon, clouds, rocks, I chose where the lighthouse would be and I spent weeks on the individual bricks and shading. I put the lighthouse at the left of the picture. I never finished it and I no longer have it, I don't have any photos of it but I do have the reference pictures and reference paintings I used to make my own. This was the last painting I did before quitting.
I think it's important to paint what you know and what you like. As a music composer, I found my own style of writing by drawing upon my favourite styles and favourite instruments. I can now do this easily (you can see more in my music blog). With art, it took me 2 years on and off and trying out loads of different mediums and areas. All of the above took place from about 2014-2016. I then wrote to Gary Gumble for advice on how to go further with my art - the following is the email I wrote in 2016 just when I was painting my final lighthouse and just before my beloved dog passed away. In addition to various books there is so much help on the internet and I found Gary Gumble's newsletters very inspiring and easy to understand. You can check out his website here https://www.beginningartist.com/:
Dear
Mr Gumble.
I
am writing because I subscribed to your emails a while ago after reading some
of your blogs on your website. It was very inspiring and practical.
You mentioned you wanted to hear from your subscribers and I thought I would
write. I have been meaning to get round to it for ages.
At
the time, I was teaching myself to draw. I seem to pick up 'how to draw'
books and do the courses but feel no further. I cannot take the leap to
do something from my imagination. The thing is, I can copy quite well but
I do have this opinion of myself that I just cannot do it, so I reach for the beginners tutorials over and over again.
I
have taken to painting lighthouses, I copied 2 pictures then I found a
photograph of a local lighthouse of ours and followed your advice to make it my
own. I put the lighthouse to the side and had 3 hot air balloons coming
in to land, they added nice colour.
I have yet to finish this picture. I found this newsletter very
interesting, particularly the 'why' question. I haven't picked it up
again, I cannot seem to get inspired and it's mostly because of 'why?'. There are so many other things to do
it seems and the pictures come last, I don't seem to know why.
Anyway,
thank you for your newsletters, they are very inspiring.
Best
Wishes
Bernadette
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