Month: December 2017

The joys of the season to everyone!

Oh joy!  Oh rapture! Oil painting again – and I think my burgeoning drawing skills are freeing up my painting arm once more.  This painting is a delight; everything is falling into place, (my happy place!).  I do hope I find the time to finish it soon.

I love the rain cloud approaching from the right, the sunlight hillside, the woods bordering the lake.  It’s the lower half of the painting that needs more attention.  It looks like a pine forest at the moment, and most of those trees are deciduous – they would have to be otherwise no dancing  daffodils!

The two smudges in the water will be boats soon, I hope,  with their white masts bridging the line where land and water meet, then some work on the lake in the foreground, and we are done.

You remember my Meander Book with the elephant theme. It has gone through many changes since I first thought of the idea and it is, quite definitely, not going to be ready this Christmas, maybe not even next Christmas.

Printing with the lino cut as the background is not an option given the size of the paper and the sheer mechanics of printing neatly so many rectangles so near to each other.  I may yet make a small lino cut of the elephant himself which would be altogether more manageable.  What I have done is to make a template of the elephant, using it as a mask while painting the background in watercolour.

Now to dress The Elephant Of No Distinction  But Infinite Charm.  This proved to be more difficult than I first imagined.  There is a considerable amount shown on my model so I had a starting point.  I wanted it to be colourful, (naturally) not a restricted palette, then.  On the other hand some co-ordination seemed appropriate.  Decisions! Decisions!   Do I dress his ear, or not?  TEONDBIC has a cover of some sort on his ears but whether that is paint of fabric is a moot point.  His saddle cloth is huge, giving an area which invites decoration, but if it’s too busy …..

This could go on and on!

I have drawn and “excavated” my image of The Elephant Of No Distinction But Infinite Charm.  I decided to leave the elephant white and print the background.  This gives me greater printed area which is easier to manage while the unprinted elephant allows for more colourful decoration.

But the printing is not as easy as it sounds.  I had hoped to use acrylic inks, but they gave a very patchy response.

lino printing paints did better, but I now remember that I used a press to achieve a good print when I did the Christmas card last year.  I can’t do that with this set of consecutive prints on a large sheet of paper.  So, I have cut out my elephant shape in thick card, attached a handle for lifting neatly, and am going to use it to mask the shape while I paint the background of each rectangle of my Meander Book.  I’m not going to complete this in time for this Christmas!  Maybe next year!