I worked from a photograph that I took on 12th April, mid afternoon. It is very nice to sketch birds but in my experience they move too fast to make a painting from the sketch. The sun was quite bright so there are some good cast shadows in the painting.

The 8 little chicks all have exactly the same markings as each other. The male and female geese both have exactly the same markings as each other too, however, I have noticed that different light does have a great bearing on the colours of their markings.

I used mixed media including:- acrylics, watercolours, waterproof pens, graphite and craft enamel paint.

I started by drawing in the shapes of the geese and chicks, the shadows and the shapes of the greenery on the edge of the lake.

The colour of water – if you see blue, paint it blue. There was a lot of blue reflected in the water from the sky above but also lots of greens from the trees on the far side of the lake.

I painted in the chicks first using a variety of brown colours that I had mixed. I also used a permanent fine line sepia pen to mark in the beaks and some of the lines on the chicks. The cast shadows are first a wash of light brown acrylic, which I overlaid, when 100% dry, with a pthalo blue. Once the chicks were painted, I painted in the greenery. I really enjoy mixing colours, especially browns and greens, because the results are endless. The amount of these colours you can mix is really up to you, experiment mixing a base green with any other colour you have mixed in your own palette, or colours straight from tubes, in varying degrees of proportion to the amount of green. When painting green foliage, start with a layer of yellow first. Then work from light green to dark greens, the more variety of colours the better. This will give your painting 3D effect, using one or two colours often does not reach the level of depth you can achieve. Once painted, I used a sepia permanent pen to make some contour lines on a selection of the shapes.

For the foreground: I underpainted the whole area with flesh tint, to which I had added a small proportion of green. I then painted in the parents, starting with Mum who is the goose on the right of the painting. The Dad goose makes a lot of noise, telling the chicks to run whenever he senses any kind of danger. These geese do not seem to mind humans standing relatively close to them without alarming them. They do attract an audience in the park!

For the geese I used a variety of browns, greens, chromatic blacks, blue, pink, red, yellow (the eye) and sepia pens for the toes. I used three different brushes, from large to very small, and a variety of different brush strokes. I used some gold craft enamel on the feathers on the backs to give them the slight shine these geese have.

The body of water: a light wash of blue overlaid with quick brush strokes of blue and greens. I then finished the foreground. I added some brown mixes (washes, quick small brushstrokes of greens), and then painted in the shadows cast by the greenery.

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Some learners have expressed interest in using these on one of the day courses at Ardleigh House. I have experimented over the years using different pastels and different papers, the frustrating part being that most papers cannot hold enough of the pastel to get a quicker rather than slower result – I do not like having to keep spraying pastel with fixatives. So now I use Sennelier card. Nearly all the pastel will adhere to this sandpapery surface. Pastels are all about blending and you lighten and darken the colour by using white to lighten and black to darken with any given colour so if I want a dark green I blend green with black, if I want a light green I blend green with white, the proportions of each colour will of course determine the colour. You do not always have to do this but it is a big part of the process. This is a tactile medium, you will get messy, your hands will need washing (you should always have a damp cloth with your equipment to wipe your hands after application) so you do not transfer one colour to another. Also you should keep your pastels clean, I wipe them after use with a dry cloth. You can blend the colour into the card using a paper stump or your fingertips: personally I prefer the later method. So if you are coming along to the day course on Thursday 23^rd July you may like to use some pastels for the first painting of the day, which will be of a medium sized animal.

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Thursday 23rd July, Watercolour Painting, 10.00 am – 3.00 pm Cost: £30 which includes refreshments and lunch.

Wednesday 29th July, Watercolour Painting, 10.00 am – 3.00 pm Cost: £30 which includes refreshments and lunch.

Thursday 6th August, Fashion Art – 10.00 am – 3.00 pm Cost: £30 which includes refreshments and lunch.

You can book these through Ardleigh House or alernatively email me and I will add your name to the class list. These are very enjoyable courses, where we complete three set projects in the classroom. If weather permits,
we usually incorporate some time outside sketching too.

I am also going to arrange a couple of Sketching Days of my own and will keep you informed of the proposed dates. These are always at local venues with easy access.
Christina

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The following week we completed a drawing/painting of Elvis Presley but I wanted the class to have a completely different approach. I used one of my
paintings I had completed of Elvis Presley and used a paint program to just pick up on the contour lines which the class worked from. This looks
confusing at first, a bit like a jigsaw and made the class think very differently about a particular approach to drawing. Once they “got into” the
idea they liked it! Job done on my behalf, well nearly, the big question – did they achieve a likeness? Well one learner commented it was the best
portrait she had ever completed in any of the classes, so a different approach can sometimes not only make you think slightly differently but you
will be often surprised and pleased with your labours.

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How to .. make a line drawing of the major shapes. You can use heavy pencil pressure for this as you want to see the lines through the background colour.

Background colours: A strong orange mix, a bright lemon yellow. The yellow is of the area of sun, the orange for all of the rest of the sky.

Brushes: hake and chisel.

Foreground: a chromatic black – burnt umber and ultramarine blue 50/50 proportions. Brushes: large round and small round headed.

Paint in the background first, horizontal brushstrokes. Do Not go back and forth over the colour with your brush. All your brushstrokes should be going in one direction only, if you go back over the paint, you are wasting your
materials as you will lift paint off of the paper.

For the sun shape use a small brush to lift out colour.

When the background is over 90% dry you can start adding the foreground, using a round headed brush. Work from the top of the paper.

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How to: Make a line drawing of the major shape, the panda and the bamboo shoot.

Prepare your palette for the background: weak washes of greens, reds, blues, purples.

Paint in the background first. Wet the background area of the paper with a hake brush, apply the paint with a round headed brush, let the weak washes mingle.

Paint the panda: mix a chromatic black and start from the top of the animal. Use a fan brush for large areas of fur, works a treat.

Paint in shadow on panda using weak wash of chromatic black.

Paint in the bamboo shoot using the colours from the background.

Paint bamboos and leaves in the background. You can work on this in many layers, that is a personal decision.

This exercise will take at least two hours to complete

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Some of the most beautiful shapes to draw are ballet dancers. When drawing two dancers the impression of one overall shape is important for design. Most dancing partners do become one shape so it usually works, as long as they are holding hands or parts of their bodies overlap. The Approach: When drawing figures the best measurement to use is the length of head, this is so useful when measuring length of body, arms and legs and also widths. Make an overall line drawing of the two figures. There are certain challenges within this drawing: the downcast face, the entwined hands, the tonal structure for the muscle shapes.

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Different types: hard brushes and soft brushes. Hard brush, if in doubt buy an acrylic one, dry brush techniques work well with these. Soft brushes: use for wet on wet, side of brush, soft brushstrokes with no hard line, fantastic for skies.

To experiment: use any paint up that may be hanging around in a palette. Try using brush dry, then completely damp, use side of brush, edge, whole of brush, see the shapes you can make. For pattern use different directional lines, e.g. horizontal over vertical. For curved line, now this is fun, make big bold patterns swirling the brush as you go. Op art effects are very easy with that brushstroke. The painting below I completed with a Hard Fan Brush and a Soft Fan Brush – no other brushes needed.

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