Pastel Landscape Paintings

Just finished a couple of new paintings. Still using soft pastels but these are slightly more realistic if still very impressionistic. But I have joined a new on-line (free) art school course. I am hoping that this will improve my art and widen the scope of possibilities open to me. I may have mentioned before that I used to sketch and draw regularly. I became reasonably good at drawing as my skills developed. However, too much crafting and abstract art (!) has compromised these skills and lack of practice has been responsible for a loss of hand-eye co-ordination. This is one area I want to improve, but there are I am sure many areas which I don't know that I don't know. The major problem with being self-taught.
Anyway the latest paintings are:-

 The Meadow

Evening Walk

You can as usual see a larger image on my Flickr account

First exercises in the art-school course are using a sketch book, I have only yet done a couple of tonal drawings in pencil and they are quite embarrassing, but an example of how much I need to learn is:-

I will not promise, but will try to post some of my efforts from time to time. If you want to see them all, then join the art-school and catch them in the private tuttorial group on FaceBook.

Red and Yellow Abstract Pastel Landscape

I find myself continually drawn to abstract landscapes, although I have recently been trying to get "real" here is yet another. I have always found colours to be an integral part of my artwork and feel at home with this style of painting. Who am I to argue?

I like using colours, I like the simplistic style. I do not have to worry about the drawing. So why not get on with doing the thing that seems to come naturally. Well, I don't want to seem to be in a rut and I do worry about learning new techniques and styles. I would like to be a well rounded artist, so I guess I will keep on worrying.

Anyway here is my latest abstract landscape:-

I have used this as an intro image for my Squidoo lens, Popular subjects for art that sells. Seems that landscapes even abstract or semi-abstract landscapes are near the top of the list.

Sketching with John

I have started to write a series of short Squidoo lenses (lens=focused web page) about my sketching techniques. Not quite a tutorial but they do give ideas which any artist may find useful. Basically showing the many different ways of achieving an image to capture the fundamentals, quickly and easily. I start with a rundown of why it is important to sketch and sketch regularly. The skills aquired can only improve your art but also give you an insight and a way of capturing real world images to use as they are or to adapt later in your studio as part of a larger or more thought out work.

 A page from one of my sketch books (watercolour)

Not Another Watercolour painting the overview of why and how I use sketching as a learning tool. So far there are three completed chapters to the set, more will be added as soon as I can get around to the task, time being my enemy at present. EAch contains many example of sketches in several different media.

1. sketching on location (tba)
2. sketching trees
3. sunsets and sunrise
4. finding inspiration (tba)
5. Sketching In The Lake District ( UK) (tba)
6. Choosing colours to paint the seasons
7. Sketching water ( tba)

A pencil sketch, with lines to helpwith redrawing in the studio

I would really love to know if you find any of these guides useful, and to do this you could either leave a comment below or attached to any of the lenses. You do not have to be a member of  Squidoo to leave a comment.

 A charcoal sketch overpainted with watercolour

One of what I call my "turnerisms", very quick sketches of skies, etc. Named after Turner of course.

Learning to paint abstract art

I have for a long time been interested in abstract art and for most of this time have simply been painting very loosely in what may be called a (semi)-realistic-abstract style. Yes, I know a bit of a mouthful and a contadiction in terms , but I never know what to call my paintings. I am now trying to start to paint a series of paintings which do not rely on an imaginary subject - just to see if I can do it. Will it provide me with a satisfactory result, willI be happy to exhibit these paintings in my next exhibition ( with the art group).

I have done this before, that is exhibiting abstracts but although I felt good about them I was very defensive about the paintings for a reason that I could not quite fathom. I guess I hear too much of the, "my two year old could do better than that", crap. Many artists would love to be able to paint with the freedom of a two year old, but that does not necessarily mean the result is a great or even a good painting. Maybe too much "illiterate" art has been put before the public in the name of "freedom of expression".

First of all, I do have a certain amount of drawing skill, maybe not the best but these sketches below show results from life classes which I used to take every week.

I have to admit that I became bored with this sort of art, for some reason I was not attracted by the subject, so I took to landscapes:

This suited me much better, and I have been happy to paint landscape paintings for getting on for 25 years but again I am feeling that there is more. My landscapes have become looser and I have begun to use the descriptive term semi-abstract, but there has always been an element of the subject matter remaining.

Some years ago I did some abstracts for my group's exhibtion, just to be different but as I said above I felt quite defensive about the results although I had spent a long time working out what I was going to do, sketching the ideas and finally committing the work to canvas. This is a short video I mad putting together some photos from that exhibition.






Finally I have decided to bite the bullet and to try and develop my skill with pure abstract painting, so that I can feel confident about the art and proud of putting it into an exhibtion.

I would love to hear what you think of these last two paintings, they are both done in pastel and are approximately A4 in size ( 8.5 x 11.5 inch). You may comment here or on a larger version of the art shown on RedGage:- for the yellow abstract and for the blue abstract.

Thanks in advance and I do hope to be able to post more abstract work in the very near future.

Note: RedGage is a website that pays you for your content and monetizes your social activity. Why not start using it today.

A new use for an old sketch on Zazzle

Do you keep old paintings and sketches? Apart from those that I have sold, I have always stored away all my paintings and sometimes pull them out and reminisce about the good old days. (good old days because I used to paint much more oten, and although often simple they had a quaint charm). But I have started to find uses for some of these older works, on Zazzle. I have started a Zazzle store and a covering blog, and am looking for interesting images - not just "good" paintings but ones I hope will trigger a purchase. Of course these are the difficult ones to find and wether I am right or not will be answered over the next few months, I guess. One of the newer additions is this apron, with an image of a sketch from one of my first forays into oil paints. A very simple sketch but one I have always liked for several reasons. Will this plus the text ( my attempt at dry humour!!!) set off that trigger.

An apple a day by artyfax
View more Fruit Aprons

PLease feel free to browse on over to the store and see what I am making of it, in fact I am starting multiple stores to try and develop niche markets, rather than having large department (?) stores. You might also find Artyfaxcards interesting, and they are quite inexpensive for individually designed products, LOL

Pastel paintings - landscapes

I have been using my pastels at my weekly art group meetings for the past couple of weeks and of course they havae all been landscapes. One of the issues that I have painting at these group meetings is that I always feel I need to complete a painting on the evening. I don't get much time for art at home these days and keeping a painting from one week to the next doesn'r really appeal to me. The first was done very quickly, This was the Tuesday of the riots (in the UK) and we spent a loy of time putting the world to rights before beginning to paint. I did not have much time left and so chose a very quick subject.

From a rerference photo of a barn in the Trossachs ( Scotland). I think it is the colours here that is attractive about this one. Simple and hence quick but quite effective I believe.
This was done on a yellow ( A4 size) paper, which is why the clouds have a slightly green tinge. The paper colour obviously works well for the colours in the rest of the painting.

The second took most of the 1.5 hours that we have on the evening ( plus a half-hour coffee break) and although I was a little unsure of this at first, I now find it very pleasing.

An italian scene, a little licence taken with the reference but I was trying to use a new technique, or at least different from my usual method of working with pastels. Note the many small strokes to get an optical mix ( a la Pointilism) rather than broad strokes with the side of the pastels. This is again approximately A4 size and is on buff card. The many small strokes produce an all-over layering which hides the colour of the ground. I shall be trying this technique out againg soon.

This last piece was anotherfairly quick piece but due to the subject more than the disturbances of friendly chatter. Again the strokes are very broad from the side of the pastel pieces.
Also A4 sized card, actually the back of a writing pad. I find that the surface of this source allows me to work with many layers because I fix each layer as I work throught the painting, a detailed look at my technique is seen in an earlier post basically here a light shade of orange was layered on the ground and a yellow and a red were layered onto this after fixing. The initial layer is thus allowed to be seen through the overpainting. Various earth colours were used for the foreground and for the trees.

As usual larger images can be seen on my Flickr account if you want to try to see how the stroke work affects the textures of the paintings.

I was asked about my pastels on Flickr, and I quote this from my answer on that platform..... "I use artists soft pastels. I have a very large collection of different makes / types and colours. A large part of the collection is of professional quality but I do have lots of artists coloured chalks.

The favourites in my collection are Daler-Rowney or unison ( very soft without being too crumbly) and Caran d'Ache (harder for line work) but I have by no means tried all the many makes available. In between these I have aquired many different sets and odd colours as presents and from browsing in art shops, etc.

I do have oil pastels but rarely use these, possibly because mine are of poor quality, i.e. too waxy and hard"

New pastel painting, Barn in the Trossachs

MAnaged to get this in last week at my art group, we spent lots of time talking about the recent riots and I couldn't settle down. I hadn't prepared a reference subject so picked something finally which I thought I would finish in the 45 minutes or so which I had left.

I was struck by the colours in this piece and decided as usual to add my own interpretation. Not my usual style as I did not build up the one in layers but just kept painting until I was happy with the result. Lots of texture as usual rather than detail drawing. The size is approx A4.

Oh yes.. it was actually done on a yellow paper which is why the sky thru the clouds seems a littlte greenish - can't get everything right all the time, LOL