25% Off All Signed Limited Editions

Happy New Year! To celebrate I'm having a January sale with 25% off all my signed limited edition prints. Visit my online shop to see what is available. Thank you to those of you who have already picked up a print.

In the meantime, here's some new artwork I finished last week:

'Leaving The Wild Wood' watercolour and gouache, 24 x 31cm

More Paisley Rabbit And The Tree House Contest

Here's a short follow up to my even shorter post last month. Below you can see the completed single page illustration of Mr Otter sat in a muddy puddle after failing in his first tree house building attempt.

"All under control - nothing to see here."

The next illustration I have been working on (and expect to be still working on it for weeks ahead) is the cross section of Paisley's magnificent tree house. The rough design for the tree house was a challenge, so goodness knows what state my brain will be in when I complete the final illustration. I can see myself sitting in the corner of the studio floor, staring, slack-jawed and unresponsive. Some people would probably not notice any difference in me!

One tree house to rule them all...

Propped up against my studio wall, and measuring over a metre in height. This watercolour is a challenge on all levels.

More WIP

I've spent the last day and half working on this and it's finally starting to come together.

'Rescue From The Storm'

The finished painting.

'Rescue From The Storm'Watercolour & Gouache
70 x 50cm

I thought you might appreciate seeing the whole thing and a crisp detail, rather than the blurry excuse for a photograph I posted previously.

Detail: I might develop the Torchcliff setting in future paintings.

A Sneaky Peek

Apparently some of these otters are 'catching a crab' - it's a rowing term

Recently finished but no scanner! A fuzzy photo will have to suffice. 

Woodland Party "Behind The Scenes" Final Instalment

For my previous posts click here, Part 1 and Part 2

Below are a series of progress photographs taken as I worked my way through the painting.

Moving on from basic blocking in of colour.

You can see here I am starting to get past the local colour stage and really moving into finding form using colour. For example look at the fox playing skittles. He is lit from the top by the warm glow of the lanterns (lots of cadmium yellow, yellow ochre and burnt sienna), however the majority of his head is facing away from the light so he is picking up the cool colours of the wood in shadow so (more prussian blues and greens).

I could have been more thorough by adding an aardvark and zebra.

By the above stage, I had just about painted the furry aspects of each critter to a suitable standard. Believe it or not, I had a folder of animal reference on my laptop that I methodically worked through from A to B (or badger to wild boar). I didn't move on to the next creature on the list until I had completed the one before it. I found it helped to break down the painting into manageable chunks by creating these small milestones to tackle each day.

It's hard to tell from the above photo, but by this stage I was concerned with the lack of depth in the image. I decided to darken the bottom edges with cool colours to hopefully lead the eye further into the middle of the scene. The bottom edge now acted like the sides of a stage design by framing the scene and providing more perspective. Note how in the final image below I darkened the sky in the far right background, again to push that further away from the tree in front.

I also completed the lanterns by deciding to keep it simple by using just yellow ochre where I could. I felt they would glow more if I depicted less detail, as if they are so bright they would be over-exposed in a photograph.

Woodland Party
Watercolour & Gouache
66 x 45cm

Job Dunn (pardon the pun)! I was pleased with the final outcome as it came very close to realising the fuzzy image I had rolling around in my head at the rough drawing stage. However I wasn't pleased when I had removed the painting from it's board, scanned and stitched it together on Photoshop, only to find I had forgotten to paint the skittle ball being held by the rat! As you can see I fixed that and then double-checked the whiskers on every animal, which is normally the thing I forget to do at the very end.

I hope you enjoyed this series of posts. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, either on the blog or Facebook.

Woodland Party "Behind The Scenes" Continued

See my previous post here.

My drawing was approved so it was time to start work on the painting.

The process to get the finished drawing on to stretched watercolour paper can be a bit tedious but it has to be done. Firstly I enlarge the scanned rough drawing in Photoshop and then I print the image on A3 layout paper. The layout is just thick enough to go through my printer and thin enough to act like tracing paper. This enables me to trace on the reverse of the printed image, with a soft pencil and then place it on the watercolour paper and transfer using a bone folder. Some people like to use biro pens for transferring because it's more accurate, however rubbing with a bone folder is very quick.

I remove the print and find the soft pencil has transferred enough to give me a ghost image on the stretched paper. I then go into the drawing with a 3H pencil and very carefully outline everything I need and tidy up any areas that are not legible. By using a hard pencil, I'm able to erase the softer lead and wash watercolour over the top, all without losing the important line work. If I were planning to keep an area very light I might not use a pencil at all, just because the pencil line might show and distract from the overall image.

Once the line work is completed I start an under-painting in sepia watercolour (see below)

The finished under-painting. If you look carefully you can see lots of the original line drawing, especially around the lanterns hanging from the oak tree.

The under-painting serves me well throughout the whole painting process. It maintains an overall warm hue as the majority of the painting will be in transparent watercolour. Also it helps to create tone and define characters in a complicated scene, and it provides me with a useful beginning step into colour because I know, whatever colour I glaze on top, the under-painting will hold the composition together for me. There is nothing worse than having to re-draw a section because the paint has washed away the initial compositional drawing.

Colour decisions being made - there's no going back!!

Under-painting finished, time to get out the colour palette! I start by blocking in the local colours (i.e red for the badger's jumper, green for the leaves), at this stage I'm not thinking about reflected warm or cool light. I have a good idea how warm the final painting needs to be, so I make sure there are lots of yellows, reds and browns, however when it comes to the clothing I either make it up there on the spot or research some old Edwardian photos to get an idea of pattern and arrangement of colour.

Working mainly on the background.

There are so many decisions being made at this stage, such as how best to depict bark on the tree trunk, does it need to have a warm into cool transition, how much light do I need to show around the lanterns, how much detail in the lanterns is required, what colour should the sky between the trees be and why did I decide to paint such a complicated image?! That last question kept on being asked.

TBC

Woodland Party "Behind The Scenes"

I have recently completed a very complicated watercolour painting featuring a multitude of British wild animals having a good old 'knees up'!

I thought I would show you the various stages I went through in creating the scene. To begin with the sketching stage. I began with thumbnail sketches, I think I did only eight in total before I found a suitable viewpoint. It's very hard thumbnailing such a detailed scene so I just concentrated on working out where the viewer should be and then relied on the more detailed drawing to find my composition.

The rough drawing below was created by sketching out rough shapes without reference working from left to right. I deliberately allow the pencil to do the work and just see what happens as I make my way across the paper, otherwise if I plan ahead, my brain would probably explode in trying to cope with all the potential compositions, characters and actions I could create. Working this way is like rediscovering my original joy of drawing as a child - no clear plans just drawing for the sake of it.

Once the basic shapes are in then I start to refine with lots of reference to guide me. I had three separate folders of reference material on my desktop for this piece, one for animals, another for furniture and props and another for trees and woods. I sketched away with a 2B pencil and used a blending stump (or tortillion) to speed up the shading. Finally I ended up with the drawing below

The first rough before alterations, 44 x 30cm

The scanned rough was sent to my wonderful client, Olivier Souille and he came back with some useful alterations which helped to focus the scene more effectively and generally improve the overall composition. It's great to have somebody like Olivier, who has a fantastic artistic eye and can often diagnose the weaker points AND suggest correct remedies.

In short I discarded a selection of animals on the woodland floor (two hares, two chickens and a toad). These were acting as filler and by removing them gave the main characters, like the badgers and foxes more room to to be defined against a lighter background. I also adjusted the female otter's 'walk like an Egyptian' left arm, added a banjo playing mouse, repositioned a stool leg which was unfortunately placed (see drunken hare, ahem) and tweaked a dancing bunny's right paw.

Final approved rough

 The new rough was approved and I was ready to get painting.

TBC.

'Evening On The Lake'

I managed to finish this watercolour, 'Evening On The Lake', last night. Having said that when I got into the studio this morning I realised I had missed some whiskers for the characters in the immediate foreground.

That toad has just failed his driving test.

As you can see, I have included lots of overlapping elements in the painting in order to give a sense of movement and watery chaos. Based on their current positions I think just about every boat has the potential to crash into another vessel and not every person at the helm is paying due care and attention. There are also ducks and geese swooping in-between the maze of sails and steaming funnels - I find birds incredibly useful in breaking up a composition.

The overall colour gradually became very N.C Wyeth, not by design, the background just seemed to demand a rich golden haze as I started to build up the fells and tree lined banks. This did mean I kept washing varied amounts of cadmium yellow and yellow ochre continually on top of one another, which made the soft pencil on the top edge slightly bleed into the sky. Next time I'll go back to the trusty 3H made by Derwent (how very appropriate).

Cheese Delivery

Cheese Delivery
Watercolour / Gouache
24 x 31cm

My latest painting, 'Cheese Delivery,' was challenge to paint because I decided to use a very restricted range of colours or, as James Gurney would say, a narrow colour gamut. My influence behind colour mixing was 'Saying Grace' by Norman Rockwell. I leant heavily on yellow ochre, burnt sienna, burnt umber and sepia throughout the whole process and only went to ultramarine, prussian blue and cadmium reds halfway through and even then they were always mixed with a brown.

Hopefully the whimsical story of the smelly cheese being delivered by an otter, with a peg on his nose, has come across in the finished painting. Nevertheless I had a lot of fun painting the crazed mice, especially the two young mice raiding the new cheese delivery.

By the way, Stenson (shop name) and Hartley (delivery van) are two surnames that feature in my family.

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten Pt .3

For the first part of this post click here, and for the second part click here.

Finally I was up and running with my brushes (not literally, although I do have wheels on my studio chair so the option is there if needed).

Under-paintings and then some.

As is my wont, I began with an under-painting. However, just to be difficult, I began with payne's grey for the station and engine and then moved onto sepia for the characters. This was to re-enforce the difference between the cool station colours and the warmly coloured characters.

After that initial stage, it was a case of blocking in colours to work out the types of clothing. Every now and then I had to grab new reference (thank goodness for Downton Abbey screenshots) but mostly I had a reasonably clear idea of costumes beforehand.

A series of WIP shots taken over a period of 10 days

You'll notice in the 'works in progress' photos I tended to concentrate on the foreground characters more than the background. Traditional thinking would be to do this the opposite way, but I found it easier to focus on the main elements first before I lost enthusiasm with the painting and ended up slacking on my quality control. There's nothing worse than a fantastic scene with a poorly painted character sticking out like a sore thumb. Also there were so many elements that really I'm not sure it mattered where I began so long as I eventually finished it.

Speaking of which here is the final painting.

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten
Watercolour & Gouache
50 x 92

 

3 weeks work in total and my biggest watercolour painting of this series so far.
 

A Quarter Past One On Platform Ten Pt .2

For the first part of this post click here.

After working out a basic, almost abstract, composition for the passengers and laying that on top of the station rough, it was time to work on each character individually. I had the intention of re-using characters from previous paintings and also introducing some that would then feature in their own personal painting. However I had no definite ideas so as usual I just started to draw in the hope something satisfactory would appear.

The full pencil rough

I'd better make clear that in order to produce the final pencil rough I printed out the initial rough at a larger size and then transferred that image onto a fresh piece of cartridge. I knew it would be a lot of work but you can't create a large painting like this on dodgy foundations (that's a favourite saying in my house).

Once I had the characters fleshed out I then put the image into Photoshop and had a play with the tonal values.

Photoshopped (is that a word?) tonal study

With the tonal study I tried to expand the tonal range on the characters and reduce the levels on the train in the hope the characters would be brought forward. This was all well and good until I realised I needed to darken the background roof to accentuate the light train in front. So now my tonal order was (front to back) dark/light medium/medium. I wasn't too confident in making the difference between all three of these tones clear in the final painting but decided (as you will see) to use a blurring effect on the roof to make sure it receded and a light glaze of white gouache on the train to bring the characters forward.

Tonal Study Detail: The badger, signing an autograph, happens to be the famous opera singer Madame Albani from a previous painting. In the background you can see an otter soldier holding his child - a reference to William Powell Frith.

Who knew the fox was a black market salesman. You might recognise the hedgehog too.

I sent this rough to my client, Olivier Souille, and he asked me to revise the bottom left section (see below)

Detail of the section in need of revision.

Olivier thought it looked clunky (my word, not his) and I agreed with his observation. I think I was so desperate to add the barrel, box, bench etc that I lost interest with the characters and how they interacted with whole image.

Before I heard from Olivier I had already sized up and transferred to rough onto stretched watercolour paper so I had to rework the area on a piece of tracing paper until I was happy and only then could it be added to the final pencil drawing.

Final Pencil Detail On Watercolour Paper: You can see I removed the bench and station paraphernalia and added more porter mice, a stoat and two young foxes. (Sorry about the poor picture quality, from here on the rest of the shots were taken with a camera phone )

The final pencil drawing ready to be painted

Detail: That little chap is awestruck.

Feast - Finished Watercolour Painting!

'Feast' was a BIG job. Some of you may already have seen the previously posted progress shots but I thought for this post I would collate everything so you can see the whole development from pencil to finished artwork.

First off I produced this detailed sketch which I extrapolated from a series of thumbnails. I'd like to show the thumbnails too but I have a habit of using them for scrap and they tend to disappear in the recycling bin well before I remember I'll possibly need them again. The sketch below is the largest drawing I have produced for the series so far and believe me, it had to be. There was a lot of erasing, re-positioning and general jiggery-pokery involved before I had a composition I liked. I always find a table-based scene particularly hard because, well, there's a table in it! They get in the way of the action, are often much wider than you think and not very exciting to draw. To counteract these issues I raised the eye-level to suggest the viewer is stood behind the mouse and hare looking down on the raucous feast (Rockwell never struggled).

A lot of the characters are taken from my previous paintings and some of them like the hares and squirrel are bound to make there own solo debut in future paintings. Also note the three distinctive social cliques formed by the guests - top left - the greedy bunch, top right - the liquid diners, and bottom - the polite company.

After the sketch was completed and approved by my wonderful client, Olivier, I moved into Photoshop to produce a small tonal study. I knew in advance how the scene should work, dark background, light middle ground and a slightly silhouetted foreground badger, but I thought it prudent to develop the study considering the amount of time I would spend painting especially if I were to make mistakes and find myself re-working the final image.

Tonal study completed and on to stretched watercolour paper. I traced down an enlarged print out and got to work on a light sepia under-painting (predictable I know). Then added local colours and started to build up and refine from there until I finally added gouache on the whiskers and highlights.

 

I deliberately chose a scene that contained objects and characters I had painted before so, armed with reference, I could confidently render every aspect. The next large painting might be more challenging but as this was my first I played it safe. Oh and I've always wished to depict a feast after reading so many wonderful foody descriptions in the Redwall books by Brian Jacques.

Feast

Watercolour & Gouache

50 x 40cm 

'Feast' Work In Progress

Here are a couple of shots taken on my phone as I'm working on my latest painting.

I'm now slowly making my way anti clockwise around the painting by concentrating on each character in turn. Once I've done the badger then I will take a look at the table and then the background. After that it's a case of pushing the values.

'Captain Seadog' Is Ship-Shape

I finished my latest animal painting last week, 'Captain Seadog'. He's now fully rigged and ready to set sail and aim cannon against 'Captain Ratbeard'.

Captain Seadog

Watercolour & Gouache

24 x 31cm

I found this piece challenging because there is not a lot of fussy detail and lots of open spaces in the composition. I kept going back to N.C Wyeth's treasure island paintings as I worked trying to grasp his wonderful sense of design and colour. It might not be up to his lofty standards but at least I successfully framed the otter's head with a light sail behind a dark hat and cast shadow over the eyes.