Happy Christmas!!!

Hope you have a good one!!!

A dawn seascape.

Happy christmas to you all on the eve of Christmas Eve!! This is my latest one! Acrylic on canvas!

Christmas Competition!

As we approach the festive season (Just over a month away)! As I'm sure all of you are aware,the christmas gifts in shops is a it of a giveaway! So, to celebrate I'm doing a competition!

THE PRIZE:

Should you be the winner, I will be emailing you a template, complete with scanned, high quality images of my paintings, so you can print it out as a perfect Christmas stocking filler!

So all that you have to do is leave your name and answer to a question appearing in one of my posts in the next week as a comment below, then on December 15th (10 days til Christmas) then a name will be randomly selected to be the winner!

Merry Christmas!

Castle Hedingham- Essex

Done using mixed media on watercolor paper; hope you like it!

Charcoal Pencils for the windows
Watercolor paints for the background
Derwent Watercolour Pencils for the castle

Derwent Watersoluble Sketching Pencils Guide

The picture below shows a guide on shades included in a 6 pack if Watersoluble sketching pencils.

Derwent Watercolour Pencils - Parrot

At the NEC - Birmingham I brought a pack of 36 watercolour pencils and here is my result!

Again this is taken with the iPad camera!

Derwent. Watersoluble Sketching, Magpie

Fulfilling my earlier promise of adding more pictures - well here it is. This one is of a magpie sat on top of some foliage. For this one I focused more on the dark pencil (8B) as the body of the magpie is obviously dark!! I hope you like it and comment below.

Again the picture was taken using the iPad camera so forgive the slight blurriness!

For more hints and tips check out Derwents website www.pencils.co.uk

I do have more on my list to upload- instructions for actually using these pencils and a couple more pictures using the Watersoluble sketching pencils!

Derwent. Watersoluble Sketching Demo

As I mentioned in my previous post one thing I was definitely surprised about was how smooth they were,yet they still retained the shade that it was supposed to.

For this picture I did use watercolour paper, just because I didn't want the paper to disintegrate, but seeing how the sketch came out standard cartridge paper you find in most sketchbooks would have been fine! So this adds to the value of these pencils as they don't come with so many other added costs!

The pencils apply just the same as normal ones do, though perhaps a little softer!

This picture has been taken using the iPad camera, so forgive the slight blurriness to the picture!!


I will be adding a couple more sketches that will demonstrate these pencils!!

Head to www.pencils.co.uk for projects,advice,hints and tips!


Thank you so much Derwent for sending me these pencils!!

Derwent- Watersoluble Sketching

Recently I received from Derwent Watersoluble sketching pencils,hopefully this post will tell you more about them! You can pick up this great value set for approximately £7 in most arts and craft shops (£7.49 -Hobbycraft) These pencils can also be purchased separately! The pencils come in a pack of 6, 2 of each shade:

2 x HB
2 x 4B
2 x 8B


If you like the versatility of watercolour pencils,yet the convenience and tones of sketching pencils then these combine the best of both worlds!

The pencils come in a metal tin to keep them together,complete with a free sharpener, great for sketching out and about!! These pencils are similar to standard graded sketching pencils, so for example (6B,4B and HB) They also have labeled the pencils to show what type of wash they create, just for added assistance!! They also come pre-sharpened so there isn't that annoyance of opening a pack of pencils and finding you still have lots of sharpening to do before you get started!

I first imagined these pencils as being quite scratchy and to be honest not that Watersoluble, so leaving indents in the paper! However these pencils were extremely soft and didn't leave any of these marks as you will find out in my next post - a demo of these pencils!


Overall if you like experimenting, creating different tones then I would totally recommend these to you!

Contacting me

Another update on my contact!!

Twitter: @claire_12heart
Email: clairesart123@live.co.uk

London Eye by night

This is my latest, done using watercolours. I didn't use standard black out of the tube I mixed it up using burnt umber and ultramarine, this is because black out of the tube can look a bit too "bold" on a picture.

Take a look at the London eye website for more information: http://mobile.londoneye.com/

It's a Puffins Love!

I couldn't think of any better titles for these two puffins having a rather "intense" moment!! But anyway this is a watercolour picture!

The Conclusion of Summer 2012

The clocks go back tonight, we had snow this morning. Winter has officially made it's first mark! What an end to a very British summer of sport! London had the Olympics/Paralympics, as I'm sure many people found the Gamesmakers definitely made the games! Also Andy Murray's victory at the US Open and the runner up at Shanghai. Not forgetting the jubilee in June.

I've also updated a few of the pages to the right of this post so take a look and don't forget to leave me your comments!

I'm sure that you have probably heard on the news that Alex Partridge and Hannah Macleod had their bronze medals stolen, Hannah's has been recovered but Alex's hasn't yet, if you know anything contact crimestoppers on 0800555111. The medals were stolen after visiting the Queen, at a nightclub in Mayfair (London). Alex Partridge had his Team GB jacket stolen which had his bronze medal in, this has been returned, its just the medal that needs to be returned. If found hand it in to your local police station or  anonymously to: GB Rowing Hammersmith.

http://www.london24.com/news/crime/alex_partridge_issues_new_plea_over_stolen_london_2012_bronze_medal_1_1672466

St Malo,France

Hello again! This time this is from inside the intra muros so I hope you like it!!

St Malo is on the Brittany coast next to the ferry port- you can get a ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo in 10 hours on Brittany Ferries, that's what we did summer 2012, which was REALLY good! No delays. We went on the overnight sailing on the way out to St Malo then the daytime sailing on the way back. Check out the brittany ferries website here- http://www.brittany-ferries.co.uk/quote-book?gclid=CI6T1q3ysLMCFUfJtAodOmYA2w

Just a reminder..

If you would like to take part in any competitions or contact me then email clairesart123@live.co.uk or leave a comment on any of the posts!

St Malo - France

Intramuros- Basically the walled city. We went there for our summer holiday this year via Brittany Ferries. The only bad point about it was that I really want to go again!

Kingfisher's Lunch

As I promised, watercolour painting. Taken from the latest Countryfile magazine- I hope you like it! (Picture taken using the iPad so excuse the slightly blurred image)!

An Apology...

Sorry to keep you waiting for another picture, I'm working on a couple currently and I will upload them hopefully this weekend. In the meantime I have made a couple of alterations to the "pages" the menu shown to the left of this post so take a look. Also feel free to post comments or requests anywhere on my blog, thank you!

Also I hope you enjoyed the great british summer!

Competition Time!

Right all you have to do is answer the following question, post your answers below in the comments!


How much does it cost to get all the equipment and materials to take up watercolour painting, with adequate ,good quality materials?

THE PRIZE: Yet to be decided!😃 But probably something to do with my pictures.

The Olympic Park

This is the Olympic Stadium with Orbit, apparently a potential british "Eiffel Tower" I don't know what they are doing with the Olympic Park after the games so I thought I should capture the park as it is in the year of the games (2012).

The sometimes ugly face of Britain!

Only Joking :-) In the run up to London 2012 I thought I would do a couple of "British" pictures. This one of a bulldog stood in front of a Union Jack was done using watercolours and a standard HB pencil.

The Bulldog has a lifespan of 8-12 Years and there are characterised by their squashed in face. Unfortunately the British Bulldog suffered, when people started to use selective breeding to create Bulldogs with super squashed in faces, this caused the Bulldog to suffer nasal and severe breathing problems!

Day 1 Opening Ceremony

Ahead of tonight's big event, this is the first of my olympic picture a day challenge. This particular picture is pen and watercolour, hope you like it!

The Start of the Olympics!

Today we start off with the womens football at Cardiff also the other football stadiums across the UK. Feel free to leave comments at the bottom of each, daily post across the Olympics about what you have been doing, events that you have watched, either on the TV or in person! Also let us know if you are seeing the last few days of the Olympic torch relay across London.

My Olympic Plan

And no I'm not in the Olympics! Every day during the Olympics (27th July-12th August) I will attempt to add some kind of art work capturing each day of the Olympics, along with the artwork I wi try to add information, hopefully to make some interesting reading:) To give you an idea of what I MIGHT do check out my page ----> where I have a day-day guide of the olympics!


Enjoy!

P.S I'd love to see some of your attempts, emailed to clairesart123@live.co.uk

Olympic Velodrome

I am in the process of doing a sketch of the Olympic velodrome which I shall be adding once it has been finished,but I thought that while you are waiting I would keep you busy with some facts about the Olympic Velodrome.

Capacity: 6,000
Event: Cycling

The Olympic stadium was designed with the help of the GB gold medallist Sir Christ Hoy. The velodrome is situated in the North of the Olympic Park. After the games the venue will form part of the VeloPark scheme along with the BMX track after the games.


Reworded information from the Official London 2012 Book

Olympic Park

In the run up to the Olympics I thought I would sketch the Olympic Park, I sketched it using a pure 6B graphite pencil (from the WHSmiths Sketching Set (half price =))) the picture was from the official London 2012 Book (also half price from WHSmiths :))

What I did for the Diamond Jubilee!

I have had quite a few requests for what I did for the Diamond Jubilee so hear goes! I went to a street party on the Monday of the long bank holiday, this is the picture that I said I would be submitting for the exhibition! Also I did take full part in the celebrations watching the Thames pageant, the Diamond Jubilee Concert and some of the service at St Paul's Cathedral! Feel free to let me know what you did below, by commenting on my posts!

The end of my arts award...

Unfortunatley I have come to the end of my Arts Award, although I will be publishing images of some of the pages of my portfolio when I get it back, probably in about 2 weeks time. My Arts Award Moderation date is the 4th July so I will keep you posted on updates!

Diamond Jubilee!

Just thought I would say enjoy the next 4 days of jubilee festivities, and have fun whatever you are up to! Leave a comment here to let me know what you have been doing!

Harlow Jubilee Art Exhibition

I have some good news! That I will be exhibiting alongside my Dad at the Harlow Art Exhibition on the 4th June 2012 at Churchgate Street Church, if you can make it along you would be more than welcome.

The Art Exhibition runs alongside lots of Jubilee events and activities. Wristbands are £2.50 or £5 on the day per person. The wristbands allow entry back without having to pay again. The event runs from 2pm-11pm, an ideal chance to bring a picnic! There is also raffle tickets at £1 each. For more information email clairesart123@live.co.uk I will uplioad the picture I am doing onto my blog in due course.

Sunset by the Sea

This again is a watercolour picture that I have used a variation of colours to create the overall effect.

Sunflowers

This is a watercolour that I have done of a sunflower, to create the textured leaves I used a variation of colours including; ultramarine blue, burnt umber, yellow ochre and hookers green.

Apologies...

I have just realised that the lack of posting is due to all of my posts going into the "draft" folder rather than the actual blog, the fault is now corrected, I apologise for any inconvenience caused!

Artistic Licence

Here is the page that I have done for my arts award. For a more detailed description on Artistic Licence see my previous post on Artistic Licence.

Beach Landscape

This is a watercolour landscape that I created from my head, for this reason I can't tell you were it is as I haven't got a clue! This scene was simple to create. A series of circles and rectangles helped me create the bucket, spade and sandcastle. The sky is made up with a graduated wash of Ultramarine Blue as I think a blue sky helps create more of a summer look.

And Happy April Fools Day!

Contacting Me

If  you have any suggestions, feedback or just have a question for me then I have created an email for this which is: clairesart123@live.co.uk  feel free to use this email and I will do my best to respond as soon as possible. Also this is where you can email me to gain acesss to my updates by email about my blog. This will be a newsletter that I will create once about once every month which will contain information, news arty tips that sort of stuff. Also I will never share your email addresss with anyone else, so feel free to sign up to that! My email address is also shown in the right hand side box with the welcome message.

 

Sawbridgeworth Art Show

Today we went to Sawbridgeworth Art Show. There were a lot of pictures varying in abilities and medias there. It was held at the towns Memorial Hall at a £1 per adult entrance fee. The pictures where mainly for sale but others weren't. Among my favourites were a Pastel Painting of a cat and elephant. There was also an extremely wide variation in subject from vary topical Olympics to countryside scenes . I enjoyed seeing all of the paintings however to improve the exhibition I would have liked to have seen more pictures to make the time spent there longer.The pictures are me at the exhibition and the entrance to the show.

Canary Wharf

This is a pastel picture done on pastel paper A3. This took me about 2 days to do.

Survey

Sorry! It would have helped to put the link in!

Logo Idea 1

This is my first design for the logo of my blog. I will be holding a poll when I have four designs for the logo, then you will be able to choose your favourite!

URGENT APPEAL

Hi, A craft forum (UK Scrappers)that I am part of has is in desperate need of more members, particuarly teenagers. If you or your children are intrested in chatting to some other teens/adults about scrapbooking arts and crafts then google UKScrappers. Teens and Kids have a seperate forum to the adults and hidden from the adults, everything is fully moderated by an amazing moderator - more for the adults. You can take part in challenges swaps , general chatting and have a great time! It also is a very quick sign up process and I amongst others will be there to help you along and chat to so I hope you will join us for some company!
P.S Adults sign up in the same way. If you have any questions email clairesart@hotmail.com

Art Shows

Hope you are having a great weekend so far. I am now offering email updates about art shows near you. All you have to do is email clairesart@hotmail.com (my email address) with your rough location and I will email you every so often with updates on local art shows near you. I will never share your email with anyone else.

Example of Artistic Licence

This is the original picture for the previous post.

Examples of Artistic Licence

This post and the next will show you an example of Artistic Licence . This landscape is done in pastels and as you can see i have changed it from the original picture.

Lowry

Lowry  29/02/2012

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Lowry was very inspirational to my work as he painted many townscapes which is what I have been focusing on. Here is some information on Lowry.

Laurence Stephen Lowry did not just paint northern scenes. He visited the south coast looking for ships and ferry s to paint. On one of these trips he visited Winchester where he observed a bearded lady pushing a perambulator. Lowry started to sketch the woman who strongly objected and used all sorts of foul language to let Lowry know it! Lowry recalled this moment and he was even more amazed that this happened in Winchester of all places!

Laurence Stephen Lowry was born in Rusholme, Manchester, in November 1887, the only child of Irish-born R S Lowry and Elizabeth Lowry (née Hobson). He attended a local school in Victoria Park, but took private lessons from William Fitz, before starting work as a clerk for a firm of chartered accountants in 1904.

Sent from my iPod

My Plans!

My Plans!  29/02/2012

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This will be going into my portfolio but you can have a read...

I have learnt through using various methods, how to adapt the style of art I produce. I have found that using various media, like graphite pencil more shading and variation of colour, or not has come into my artwork. Experimenting with different media has also given me more of a versatile base to my skills. I have found that it has helped having my blog(www.clairesartyworld.blogspot.com) where I can use the comments gained from there to help me develop my own style. What I will continue to do is carry on experimenting with different media and improving my paintings and drawings with the help of other peoples constructive criticism. Throughout my portfolio I will include examples of this continued work which will also be viewable on my blog(link above).

Sent from my iPod

Tonal Sketches

During the time I have spent on this part I have been working on a series of london sketches. I chose to work on London as there are a lot of landmarks that I can sketch and they would look good as sketches. In my. collection so far I have done ; St Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben and Tower of London. There will be more sketches to follow.

Artistic Licence

Artistic licence is where you have the ability to change or adapt part of a readymade picture from a magazine or photo to make it your own. This could include changing positions of particular features of the picture. You might also change the colour of the sky in addition. Doing this it could enable you to be looser in your style of drawing or painting creating a possibly better image.

Equipment for Watercolour Painting

You will need:
Paper- Whatever feels the best to you like I mentioned in the last post.
Paints- A recognised name like windsor and Newton is preferable. If you are just starting out then I would recommend off of eBay "Essentials" it's 15 tubes of paint and 2 free brushes. The quality isn't as good as some but it's decent enough to get you started. The brand for those is Royal and Langnickel.
Brushes- If you don't get the set I have recommended then I would recommend getting 3 brushes from the stands you see in the likes of HobbyCraft or the Range. You should get a wash brush, round brush and a rigger brush.(Those will be defined tommorow!)
Palette- Of course you could use a dinner plate but any palette from a craft shop will cost you well under two pounds.
Pen- I would say to get a waterproof black very fine pen would be useful for pen and ink drawings

HB pencil and rubber

Types of Watercolour Paper

You can get many types of watercolour paper to suit your individual ability. When you are just playing around with watercolours you may just choose to go with very thin cartridge paper or possibly even standard printer paper. This is all perfectly fine although the quality of your painting will be very limited. As you get more experienced with watercolour painting you can get thicker paper, this could start from around 90lbs to what professional artists use - 140lbs. Brands are up to you but I would recommend Windsor and Newton. One other brand you could go for is Royal and Langnickel.

Sent from my iPod

St Paul's Cathedral

Here is my latest sketch of St Pauls Cathedral. This is a tonal sketch using various shades of pencil.

"Base Tones"

When sketching and in most cases painting you always add a base tone to areas of your drawing then add extra shadows.

Cross hatching

A technique useful in sketching is cross hatching it is a way of filling space without many hard lines.

Update on my Latest Sketch

This is continuing on Twitter but still

Step by Step St Pauls Cathedral

Check out my Twitter Feed @claire_12heart for a step on St Paul's Cathedral which when it's finished I will be uploading to my blog if you have missed it!

Sent from my iPod

Pastel Landscape

This is a landscape pastel drawing that I did based on a cheap DVD that I got in the January sales.

Monthly Challenge!

On the 8th day of each month this year I will be setting prompts for your own paintings/photos, which should get your creative juices flowing! So for January it is...........

Creativity

This probably sounds a bit strange if you are on here as an artist, but interpret this in your own way. For example it could be something still life related or even just a normal painting you would do. Feel free to interpret this however you like. If you don't mind sharing your results, email them to me at clairesart@hotmail.com so that I can upload them onto my blog to inspire other people like you.

Buckingham Palace

Sorry for the delay in posting this, Christmas just seemed to fly past!! I hope you had a fantastic Christmas!  Anyway, I completed this over the Christmas period, with one of my Christmas presents; How to paint London by Geoff Kersey. The book is probably one of the best that I have ever had as far as watercolours goes. It turns good paintings into fantastic ones, also it gives detailed  and well explained steps, even with tracings, which I didn't use for that particular painting. This picture is just watercolours, with a couple of watercolour pencils just to reinforce some of the lines. I hope you like it! Check out my Gallery for more of my pictures as the rest seem to get lost in all the posts :)