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