Kingfisher

I did this picture for a christmas present. It depicts a  Kingfisher that I have done using the majority of watercolour paints. To create the feather like texture on the body of the bird I used the end of the paintbrush ( I have a plastic ended paintbrush, but you could use any) . I also used a watercolour pencil to reinforce certain areas of the feathers.

Merry Christmas!!

Just to wish you a very Happy Christmas and the best of wishes for 2012!!!!!!! 

Creating Clouds.

1. Create A Wash of Colour that you want to use for the sky. For example if you want to get the effect of a summers day I would probably use Ultramarine Blue.
2. Then with a tissue, scrunch it up and dab out some of the sky colour to create cloud shapes. DON'T be tempted to draw outlines for the clouds as this could make them look slightly fake and cartoon like.
3. Once you have done that add a touch of black or grey. To create this colour mix burnt umber and ultramarine blue. Don't use the ready mixed blacks as they can knock areas DEAD! Add this colour to the bottom of the clouds, this will give the impression that the clouds are rounded, and that there is an "underneath".

I will upload images soon to go with this step by step.

Click here to go to visit my other techniques and step by steps.

Some Arty Terms....

Cockling - If you don't use proper watercolour paper then the paper cockles because of the water. This means that the paper goes wrinkly and wavy.

Rigger Brush - A VERY thin brush that you can use for fine detail on pictures.


Keep a look out for new terms as they come onto my blog.

If there is any other terms that you would like explaining on the blog then email me here to get them answered.

Click here for the more techniques and step by steps.

Easy Step By Step on how to Paint!

Step by Step Landscape

This is the front page of the book that contains the picture that I am going to use for my first Step By Step on my blog. I got this book for Christmas and it was from QD Stores.  

This is the Original Picture. As you will see I have changed some of the colours in my version. My Picture is loosely based on this picture from the book. This is something that you can adapt to any picture; you don't have to copy every single detail of the picture.

1.       As you can see here I have used masking tape to attach the paper to my drawing board, which in actual fact is just a piece of plywood! Anyone at home can use anything really but if you don't have a board you could use a lap tray or even an old book. You place the masking tape to the board leaving a small border. This means when you take the tape of you will be left with a crisp white border.

2.       This is the pencil sketch which you might only just be able to see, but it is there. And you don't want to necessarily see the pencil lines on the finished painting. Draw out the sketch, don't worry if its not that precise as this painting only really needs "silhouettes in the distance"

3.       The Next step is to add water to the whole of the painting. There is NO care whatsoever involved in this just slap it on and have a bit of fun!

 

4. Again even this bit doesn't need much care!! What you now need to do is add French Ultramarine to the top, make sure it doesn't go on to hard (dark) but also don't put it on too light as watercolours dry 50% lighter. Next create a mix of Alizarin Crimson and Cadmium Yellow. There is no precise recipe for this just to make an orange. Do the same with this as you did with the Ultramarine. The next step is to leave it to dry. It must be 100% dry before you continue. If you are a bit impatient (like me!) you can use a hairdryer to speed up the process.

 5. Then create a purple mix for the buildings and clouds. You do this by mixing Alizarin Crimson, a touch of Burnt Umber and Ultramarine Blue.  Then with a smaller brush paint in the shapes of the background. This is perhaps what might look like the trickiest step but don't worry if you go "out of the lines" in a couple of places because remember this is in the distance so it won't be precise! While you are there use some of the same colour to add lines and various shapes to make clouds. When the purple for the buildings is still wet go in with a stronger orange. The purple and orange WILL run don't worry. Get a piece of masking tape and press it on a piece of clothing. This won't damage your clothes and this is just to get the stickiness from the masking tape off. Then lay the masking tape on the building to sea boundary. This is just to create more of a shadow from the buildings in the sea and to make it more defined.

7. Next add the silhouette of 3 boats in the front with a strong mix of Burnt Umber and ultramarine. But this has to be when the picture is dry. Let the whole picture dry taped and on the board. This is to prevent cockling of the paper. Once it has dried you can take the tape off. Always tear the tape of towards you rather than the painting as it could rip. See opposite for the finished painting! If this is your first painting then you could frame it.

Happy Painting!

Front Cover of My Arts Award

This is my front cover of my arts award. To create the cover, it involved many different parts to it. First, I used a pink pastel in  various places across the front page then I fixed the pastel using hairspray. This gave the black a varied shade to the cover. Then I created my own art wordle. I did this on http://www.wordle.com/. The wordle involves as many words as I could have thought of related to art. Then on a white piece of card I used a red pastel to create the pink and red shades on the lettering. I then fixed this to the card through the same method.Next, using acrylic paints I added purple areas to the darkest peice of paper. I then wrote the title, "My Arts Award" and cut the words out individually. I also, once the ink had dried went over the titles in a white pen so through the middle of each letter was a white line. I found that this helped the title stand out. I then glued each peice onto the cover. As I did this I mounted the wordle on orange card as it made it stand out more. It also managed to capture the overall colour scheme of the wordle. Once everything was glued on I used metallic pens to doodle around the edge, the doodling  had to try and mimic the motion of leaves.  

Mini Countryside Scene

This is a scene that I have created as a space-filler in my portfolio for my arts award. I have done this picture in watercolour paints. The scene depicts a series of fields that are in front of the sea and sheep grazing in the foreground.

Snow Scene

This is a pastel painting of a snow scene that I have created from inspriration from previous paintings that I have done. I might also use this picture for fronts to Christmas Cards.

Merry Christmas!

The Tower of London

This is the London with the Thames in the front. I have completed this to go with my other London  townscape images, which can be found on my London Townscapes Page which will be updated with more as I continue the series.

Tower Bridge Sketch - London

This is one of the longest sketches that I have EVER done as it took me over 2 months!! But never mind, I am really happpy with the result as with the next sketch I do I will upload a step by step guide, so I hope you will like it! With this picture I did the base sketch, as I always do then I went in with the shadow and  various tones. Please take a look at the rest of my London collection on my London townscapes page.

Dover Castle

This was actually done quite a while a go, during this year's summer holiday. It was inspired by a visit there which was AMAZING! There where great views and from Dover you can see france and all the ferries going back and fourth from there. One piece of advice I do have for anyone off to Dover Castle is to take very good notice of the map and look at things in sequence, as the length of the castle is very long and you don't want  to be walking it too many times like we ended up doing!!  Anyway back to the image! This is a tonal pencil sketch I did on a very cheap A5 cartridge pad, £2.50 to be precise but it does the job, which in my case is pencil sketching!

Ballerina

Here is my second pastel painting, the inspiration came from the next issue of the "Paint Magazine". The image depicts a ballerina, lit up and figures on watching her in the distance. However if I was to do this again, I wouldn't do it on rough waterclour paper where it is going to leave a slightly strange effect.

My Art Wordle

This is the Wordle I am using for the front page of my arts award portforlio, check it out and PLEASE leave me some comments!
 
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4444116/Art_Wordle_
 
 

Hylands Park

Today we went to Hylands Park to a craft show. We arrived at Hylands park and went around the grounds of Hylands Park. The show was actually held in the house. We looked around the house as there was still the usual exhibitions in there. The crafts ranged from knitting to watercolour painting. We saw aa couple of stands with watercolour paintings on. Many of these paintings had a watercolour theme of winter paintings. This gave me quite alot of inspiration for christmas cards. Some of these ideas included robins and a fireplace scene.The fireplace scene included a fireplace with a cat on christmas eve with stockings hung up. That particular picture was painted by Jenny Henderson, a member of the Essex Guild of Crafts. Also in the crafts fair were also things like these really nice knitted scarfs, but they were knitted loosely on very thick needles so looked very lace like. Among the other crafts were photography, clothing and felt crafts.

Dog

This is my first but recent soft pastel painting I got this picture from the front page of the "Paint" magazine that comes montly from the SAA. I have blended different colours of pastels to create the brown on the dog. Please leave lots of comments!

My Dad

I couldn't be doing my art hero without including my Dad. He has been painting for about 3/4 of a year longer than me and focuses on watercolour painting. He bases his ideas from pictures in magazines and painting books but adapts them to create his own paintings. Click here to visit his gallery on painters online and please leave him comments!

Colour Mixing

Hi,

For all the budding artists out there I have created a colour mixing guide out of my seven basic colours. These colours include Cadmium Yellow,French Ultramarine,Alizarin Crimson,Hookers Green,Raw Umber,Yellow Ochre and Light red. From these seven paints you can mix any colour with all of those paints as you can see with the colour mixing guide I have provided. I will also try to get a better quality image in the next couple of days of it.I personally prefer  artist quality watercolours as these have a stronger pigment. But Student quality ones (the cheaper stuff) are perfectly good for any begginer who is just starting out. You can get a set of around 15 colours for around £5 on ebay (which I started with) so they really are budget. When buying watercolour paints I would reccomend that you look out for brands such as Royal and Langnickel, Winsor and Newton and Cotman, if you buy paints from these brands you can guarantee they won't be 99p Store paints!! Please leave lots of comments!!!!

Coming Soon!!

EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW.... of what is to come to  my blog!

Some instructional stuff for all you budding watercolour painters!
More pictures
More reviews on art shows
More tips and tricks

and much much much more!


UPDATE: We didn't win anything on the raffles at the Saffron Walden Art Show :)

Saffron Walden Art Show

Today we went to the Saffron Walden Art show in the town hall. There was a selection of pictures from various people in the Saffron Walden Arts Trust availible to look around. The pictures ranged from seaside boats done with a pen and wash to an acrylic tiger. However my favourite picture which I voted for as my picture of the show was a donkey with its head poking over the wall in watercolour. This has given me inspiration for a watercolour picture myself which of course I will upload to my blog very soon!! Another idea I had was from many of the canvases which where textured, possibly done with papier mache would create a good effect for seas if I was to look into Acrylics. Also the textured effect would be good for front covers of books. Seeing pictures of different medias side by side I thought that if I was to take my arts award to another direction I could combine different medias for different effects and textures. One example of this I particuarly liked was a gold based one where she had used tiles,wool  and wood. We also entered into a couple of raffles raising money for the trust, one to win a boat painting (we chose mumber 22 as our lucky number) and a raffle to win a christmas hamper with about 4 availible, (Our strip of 5 was 461-465)

Comments

I wanted to thank all of you for the really helpful comments you have given me, everyone of them counts! I hope you can check out the new contents below and continue your "commenting work".

Thank you again.

Claire

Aumtumn River

This is my most recent picture of an Autumn River. The sky was done with ultramarine blue. While this was still wet I did the distant trees with a mixture of light red and other autumnal colours for the leaves. As the leaves were done on a wet on wet surface the colours blended. After the wet on wet background had dried I did the trunks using a number 6 round brush with raw umber. After that I completed the rest of the picture normally. When I got to the grass I made up a mix of green using hookers green, cadmium yellow. On top of that I added a mix of green with hookers green and raw umber in places that needed shadow. To create the blades of grass I used my fingernailand scraped at the painting.

Roses

This is a recent picture of abstract roses using watercolours. The background was light red and ultramarine blue with a splash of Alizarin Crimson.

Mickey (Mouse??)

This is a fairly old watercolour picture that I have done on my next door neighbours cat. The background was again an ultramarine. I have used masking fluid to create the whiskers. Masking fluid is an agent which turns into a material similar silicone/rubber. This material can then be painted over which can then leave a pure white surface. This is good for things like rigging on boats or small amounts of snow.

Kate and William

Or should I say the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge?? Never mind anyway. This was one of my older pictures, a tonalish sketch of the couple. I based it on a "how to" on youtube. The flag at the back was my own addition as I thought I needed something to bring the couple together and more "joint". I hope I haven't offended them!!

Swan

This was a picture inspired from a book I received for my Birthday last year. Again this picture was done using watercolours. For the detail on the feathers I have used a watercolour pencils to help enhance the texture on them. For the background colour I have used Prussian blue for a very deep background.

Waiting to set sail...

This is a version of a picture I found in Charles Evans' Top tips. I did the sky with a wash of ultramarine and colbalt blue. I completed the picture using watercolour paints and a watercolour pencil for the rigging on the boat.

My Art Hero

What could a simple headache do?? At this moment in time you are probably thinking not much but think again. Around 5 years ago Dad had a headache, and suprise suprise there isn't much on TV these days at 3am ! Hopping on TV he found this man: Charles Evans. Since watching one of his programmes on Discovery he, and I have got the painting bug ever since!! We brought loads of his instructional DVD's which are really informative in the 20 minutes allowed.Click here to visit his website or check out some of my other links for some art inspiration!!

Clifton Suspension Bridge

This is a picture inspired by a 2010 summer holiday visit to Bristol. I painted this in watercolours however scanning this picture into the computer has caused the colours on the picture to become very washed out and light. I created the attempt at the atmospheric sky using alizarin crimson and cadmium yellow for a varigated wash. I also introduced a dash of French ultramarine blue within the alizarin crimson for the sky. I simplified the scene and created a foreground bush by layering yellow ochre with green. After that I used blue to introduce shadow to the greenery.

Big Ben

This is the first introductory picture to my blog . I completed this picture on an A3 sketchpad which in comparison to my A5 sketching took alot more pencil! I started this drawing off with a under drawing. This then allowed me to add a base tone to the drawing, once I had completed that I then went in with the different tones, shades and additional detail over the top of the drawing.

Welcome to Claire's Art!

Hi, I my name is Claire and I am 13 years old. I started watercolour painting many years ago. Well when I say that I am only 13!!!! It has been only semi recently (within the year) that I have started watercolour painting a lot more seriously and I have been drawn to other medias for art as well such as tonal pencil sketching. I have made this blog for my arts award that I am doing in Year 9.





I hope that you enjoy reading my blog,





Claire





P.S Please leave some comments on my pictures!!??