I am very pleased and proud to tell you that my website is now live. Please do have a look and sign up for the Newsletter at the top of the Home page. I will be sending out quarterly Newsletters telling what I have been up to. Feel free to give me any feedback too. There will no doubt still be a bit more tweaking before I get it completely right, but I am indebted to my wonderful nephew for completely revamping my site, and yes, it did need it – big time. There are a couple of slight hiccups with iphones and ipads not getting the Line Art images, but we should be there in the next day or two, so please bear with me one more time. Henceforth, you will find my blog on the website as opposed to a separate link, which should be easier for everyone, including myself! So, to ‘The Result’ which is now completed. I have been adding glazes to the background wall to give more shade and bring out the light from underneath the lampshade. Glazes are great for adding depth gradually to a painting and I have done similar on the…
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Again, my sincere apologies that there is no image with this week’s Blog; a problem again with the new website being in transition. I am SO excited about the new site and am impatient to see it up and running. This piece ‘Liberation’ is about new beginnings for this woman, I think. Off comes the bra and into a new life for her, a strong and confident woman – does anyone else see this?! Would welcome any feedback. I have lost count of the times I have changed the background and flooring in this piece. I was determined not to use brown – why do I have a horror of that colour? – and tried various shades of blues, all of which just took over the picture too much. In the end I decided to go for black to show up and compliment the legs more. I mixed Ultramarine (Michael Harding paints are AMAZINGLY pure, so you use less of them) and Burnt Umber to get the desired shade. I find using just black paint is too matt, too deadening. By mixing these two colours I will be able to vary the depths of tone as I go along. I…
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My apologies as for some reason I cannot upload the image of this work. It could be because I am in the process of having my website completely revamped and therefore I can’t manually upload images temporarily. If you would like to see the image, please have a look at my Twitter account @MicheWatkins from tomorrow (29 October). Thank you for your patience. This painting is in its early stages hence only one leopard print shoe so far. This is a young woman who is confident, modern and very into her fashion. The red bra has come off, hence the ‘liberation’ but I leave the viewer to imagine what happens next. She could be going to a burlesque class, or just finished it; or about to meet her lover, who knows? This is why I so love painting pieces like this, I have my own ideas as to what is happening, but you the viewer will have your own ideas. I may soften the colour of the bra as at the moment I feel I have a bit of overkill on the red tones. There will be more contrasts of light and darks as I go along I think, to…
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Happy with the way this has worked out. It has proved almost impossible to completely replicate the colours on Photoshop for Twitter and here on my Blog, so my apologies. The dress is a more vivid sea green and there are shades of this on the shoes too. I decided to add the rhinestones on the heels as bit of fun, as I feel most women like a bit of glitter on their stilettos…. This painting is now available to buy on my website www.michewatkins.com at £295 and is 45 x 60 cm. If you like this painting, do have a look at my website to see more of my work. I like capturing a moment in time in a woman’s day, a woman who is strong, confident, happy in her own skin. Quite often I will crop the work or turn the head away to make the image more anonymous. The viewer is then free to make up their own mind as to what is happening. I am also a great lover of bright colours! I am in the process of having my website completely overhauled and already the work in progress is looking wonderful. Will look forward to…
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Enjoying deciding on colours for this. I particularly like the red of the sofa and will put more lights and darks into it as the painting progresses as I think the contrasts of light and shade always make for a more interesting work. I had about a 50/50 split on Twitter feedback regarding leaving the shoes as they were or changing them. In the end I a) slimmed down the straps and b) changed the colour to incorporate a coloured sole. They may well become more pink next week. The dress at present is sea green and I might put a pattern onto it as I go along. I hope you like this painting and enjoy seeing the process behind it. You can see more of my work at www.michewatkins.com. I am interested in portraying women who are strong, independent and beautiful but with a touch of anonymity such as cropping or turning the head away from the viewer who can then make up their own mind as to what is happening. I am having my website updated which is very exciting. Watch this space and feel free to give me feedback when it goes live. www.michewatkins.com Facebook : Miche…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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