Week 1. ‘Downtime’. 7 October 2015

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A new painting, which always excites me. The model for this work is one of my life models who has such wonderful skin to paint and a natural grace when she poses for the life drawing class that I run. I asked if she would come to the studio and model for me in various settings that I had in mind. In the end she had her own ideas as well, and we came up with some brilliant poses which will feature in future paintings – and in fact already have. With this work I wanted to convey the woman of today, confident, happy in her own skin, hard working etc. She has had a good day at work and is relaxing with a glass of wine before she goes out possibly. Or this could be her workwear and she is knackered and just wants her downtime. The hands behind the head are so that she can be just thinking her own thoughts, reflecting on her day, or wondering on the evening ahead. Or just listening to some cool music. Sometimes, as I have said before in one of my blogs, cropping a painting works well. The viewer does not…

‘Hanging A Painting’ completed. 1 October 2015

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I am immensely grateful to a follower on Twitter who told me they thought the shoulders were too broad and the legs too short for this woman. I get so involved with my work, I can’t always see errors that are glaringly obvious to anyone looking at the painting for the first time. So I pass on another tip for what it is worth. Always, if you can, get someone else to peer over your shoulder at your work. A fresh pair of eyes is always good and first impressions are usually correct. Constructive criticism is always helpful (so my tutor used to tell me….) I had already made the arms smaller than from the original photo, but could now see more work needed doing and I have altered them accordingly. The reason the legs looked short to this viewer was that I had got so involved in painting the hair that I was adding more and more brushstrokes, hence an overlarge head of hair and little legs! I have taken away some of the hair and now feel happy with the result. A little more fine tuning of the paintings and I was done. I will not be putting…

Week 3 ‘Hanging A Painting’. 24 Sept 2015

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Miche

So I sat down this week with my my Ipod Shuffle plugged in (yes it does still exist) and turned up the volume on the Rolling Stones and off I went.. I never seem to learn that is better to approach the painting of the flesh ONCE I have been experimenting and gaining confidence with other parts of a painting. Painting flesh tones is notoriously difficult, at least for me and needs to be approached with caution! A skirt is blue, shoes are red etc., but flesh is pink, blue, purple, yellow ochre etc etc etc and I always, always get it wrong first time around. As I did this time – again. Anyway, with Mick and Keith in the background I calmed down and got the flesh tones going again AFTER painting the picture frames etc. I do like adding in my touches of blue and pink to the skin as it adds interest. Talking of which, I have set myself a really hard task putting my paintings into the picture. For a start they are unframed, so have had to imagine the frames (with a little help from Google) and then how much detail do I put into…

Week Two – Hanging a Painting. 16/09/2015

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This image will not be brilliant as I managed to leave my Ipad at a friend’s house last weekend, so am now waiting for it to be sent back to me and have to rely on my aging laptop which is very hit and miss these days. Several people got in touch me on Twitter to say they hadn’t received my weekly update as usual. I have no idea why this happened and I apologise and hope all Tweets got through this week. I did wonder why I didn’t get the usual enquiries and was beginning to lose faith in myself – we creatives are a sensitive lot! So to the painting. I have decided to abandon the ‘drip’ effect for another another time. I should have prepared the canvas before this way and then I think it would have worked. Doing it after I had put the figure and pictures just made a mess, so back to the drawing board as it were. Would really like to have a go at that sort of background though – YouTube is great for lessons on this sort of thing by the way. I am having fun with the small paintings on…

New Work, week 1, Hanging a Painting. 9 September 2015

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So time for a new blonde painting and red shoes (specially for @RoyRad1 !). I had started this painting when I got sidetracked into looking at other artists’ work and in particular those who are using the drip painting effect at the moment. I REALLY liked this effect and Googled on YouTube how to do it. I am sometimes too impatient and decided to give it a go there and then and the result was rubbish. …. So I have this morning painted over it and started again. The tip here is to prepare the background drip effect work BEFORE starting putting in the figures etc. I will know for next time haha. Art is always an ongoing learning experience for me. My original thought was to have the girl standing on the ladder stool hanging the one painting of herself and have the neutral background, but looking at it this morning I decided this was missing something, so have inserted a touch of humour here….I have put in two more paintings of my own work and leave the viewer to find the originals on my website! If you don’t find them, then I am not a very good representational…

Madiba – 3 September 2015

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Miche

In the lull before I start a new work this weekend, I thought I would talk about the painting that is on the frontpage of my website, www.michewatkins.com. I spent 5 years in Cape Town and came to love, like the rest of the world, Nelson Mandela, known as Madiba locally. I particularly liked his eyes (like one of my other portraits of Amy Winehouse) and the gentleness, but also steely resolve, which I wanted to paint to the best of my ability. I used a photo from the internet of course, not having recourse to getting to him to sit for me(!) and think I managed to achieve my objective. For some reason I have a dislike of using brown paint and avoid it as much as possible. Obviously for Madiba’s skin colour I had to use some, but I added in shades of pinks, purples and violets wherever possible. These days with a bit more confidence and experience, I would also have added in some of my beloved Kings Blue Deep (Michael Harding) to add interest. Often the best part of a painting for me is putting in the delicate highlights at the end, the little white in…

Daily Diva Dash completed. 27 August 2015

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I am almost sorry to have finished this painting as I have much enjoyed the working of it. I think it has been the contrast of lights and darks which have, as always, drawn me in. The end result is a much more interesting composition and one which I will return to in my next work. I added in touches of one of my favourite Michael Harding paints, Kings Blue Deep, right at the end which I feel rounds off the painting. Yes, I know the girl does not have blue cheeks, but doesn’t it look more fun this way?! Michael Harding paints are certainly dearer in price, but the pigments are out of this world and I use less of them as the paint is thicker. I would also recommend Rosemary & Co’s brushes which are again, slightly pricier, but so much better and last longer (I think). The wedding ring is back on the table to, hopefully, make the viewer think and hopefully make up their own mind as to what is happening. This is why I so like painting narrative figurative works as opposed to straight portraiture which is what I used to do. There is a…

Daily Diva Dash, week 3. 19 August 2015

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So the best part begins for me, going down to smaller brushes for adding in the detail. Whenever I start a painting, after a week or so, I look at what I have achieved with bigger brushes and much looser work and think I should leave it like that. But the fine artist in me always wins out and I go for the detail. Maybe I should try and stop at the early stages with a painting – feedback welcome here ? I have been putting in highlights to the left of the painting as the composition is lit from a window which I felt did not help the work by being put into the picture. I have softened the light from the overhead lamp by introducing more muted shades of yellow ochre to compliment the purple shades above the girl’s head – complimentary colours always work by the way, Google the colour wheel for more on this aspect of colour. Next week should see the final details of the wine glass, mirror etc., and of course the gold ring! I have added in some detail on the shoes but am not sure whether I will keep that bit of…

Week 2 of Untitled (so far). Could be Daily Diva Dash! 12 August 2015

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Miche

Having asked in last week’s blog for any ideas for a title for this painting, someone has come back with the brilliant title of the ‘Daily Diva Dash’. Out of the window went all my romantic ideas of the wedding ring and the pros and cons for the viewer of a possible affair in this work. Instead, the daily task of looking your best and I think there could be a series of paintings here (if I can persuade my model to pose yet again for me!). So thank you WyzappleGal on Twitter for the clever title. The colour is not completely accurate yet via the photo I have put up and I apologise for this. The table cloth is a muted pale green and I shall eventually put some white polka dots on it ….or not, depending on my mood at the time of painting haha. I keep making the background darker and still think it could be darker still, but will wait a few days to review it. I use linseed oil with this, adding it to the oil paint so that I get a hopefully, light glaze. Glazes are brilliant as you still see the original paint…

New work, Week 1, untitled so far. 5 August 2015

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After struggling so hard with my last painting (‘Envy’ see previous Blog) because of no defined light source, I am really enjoying this new work. Very early days yet, but I have a good feeling about it. I was really pleased with the composition of ‘Envy’ and the end result worked, but this painting feels so easy in comparison. So….my studio is relatively small, and is also where I live, so am mostly confined to photographs to work from. In an ideal world, I would always work from life, but this is just not possible at the moment (I need a gallery to take me on lol) so photos rule for now. I teach life drawing locally, and asked one of my models to come and pose for me in a series of poses that I set up and this is the result of one of them. I shall emphasise the lights and darks more as I go on – again Caravaggio comes to mind here – and I have put more red into the model’s top to bring in an element of colour interest. As yet this work is untitled, and I would welcome help here if anyone has…

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