bunn

Over the festive period I felt that I hadn't done much arting for a little while, so I put some effort into it. Now my brain seems to have entirely tuned itself in to visual stuff and I don't seem to be able to concentrate on writing! I am actually doing fairly well on concentrating on work for a change, though, so not all bad...

But it would be so nice to feel in charge of what my brain does instead of it just behaving like Rosie and randomly moving off in its own direction, towing me behind it without any real indication of why...

Also, I am getting to the end of my fully written, edited and beta-read chapters of Rexque Futurus, having just published Chapter 9 (and introduced Jormundgandr to begin the downfall of London). I have made some progress on the unfinished chapters 12-15, but I could really do with getting going on those now, otherwise I shall have to break my chapter-a-week streak, which would be sad.

Anyway, here's a fairly quick watercolour Celegorm & Huan in Valinor.

( More art under the cut! )

I met these angry little ponies last year on Dartmoor, they galloped straight past me, intent upon their argument, and I had a chance to take quite a few photos of them, so I used one of the photos to make this. I changed the colours and textures of the background to make them stand out.

Pp doesn't like the top bit, I think he feels its too abstract. I feel that it's OK because it's only there as a backdrop to the ponies.

I drew this quickly last night, and it is very small: Huan & Luthien.

( Read more... )

I painted these four for the upcoming Tavistock Group of Artists exhibition in Tavistock. I can enter up to 8 large paintings and 4 small paintings: I had loads of big ones, but no small ones, so I painted these four. Because if I'm going to exhibit, I might as well do it properly. I've bought a bunch of frames and mounts too: fairly cheap ones on Ebay, but the pictures do look a lot more complete when framed. I had to come up with prices for all of them, because the exhibition only shows paintings that are for sale. THAT was hard.

Fingers crossed. What could possibly go wrong?

Lynher. She is standing on one of the old D-day quays that still exists, so I gave her some rusty armour.

Tamar. The Tamar is the biggest river, and the brownest, and also has grey seals. I think the apples are probably the heritage variety 'Tamar Beauty'.

The Tavy is a fast-flowing river that goes through Tavistock, where they sell those hats. And also she has a hydro-electric power plant that powers the town.

And the Walkham is a pretty little river full of small flashing fish, that never really grows up, because she flows into the Tavy, and then the Tavy flows into the big curvy river Tamar.

The Dancers
I don’t know who they are, or whether the dance is about to tip over into battle. Huge thank to Marcus Ranum of ranum.com for stock photos I referenced for the poses.

We were doing Dancing & Motion in art class this week. Colin the Art did a painting of the Padstow 'Obby 'Oss (the blue ribbon one) but I had forgotten what the subject was so didn't have a chance to pick reference material specifically for this, and I didn't want to just do a copy of his, so I decided that I would do my own thing from a couple of reference images that I had previously saved. I'm pleased by the sense of movement that comes from the streaks, I shall use this technique again! This is the sort of movement I wanted to be able to paint when I started the classes, and now I can!

( Three more assorted arts here... )

A friend sent me a quick selfie a while ago of herself wearing a dress that she had made. I thought the pose and expression was interesting (as well as the dress being lovely) and so I made a painting of it – though, I had to change a lot of things.

The original photo was taken with a phone camera into a mirror, indoors in artificial light. This is the painting I made from it.

My friend is a great lover of books, so I turned the phone in her hand into a book, and added her pet budgie and tortoise to the picture to keep her company, along with an enormous rose-bush and a random pillar.

This picture is only 14 by 10 inches, so I'm quite pleased I achieved a likeness in such a small space.

... we were painting things inspired by the work of Joaquín Sorolla, 'Spanish Master of Light'.

I painted this based mostly on a photo I took when we were canoeing on the Helford estuary, but I added a seal and a swimmer for no particular reason. This is quite a large painting by my usual standard, A2 size. I'm pleased with the light and colours, though as usual it doesn't look quite as vibrant in the painting as in real life..

And here is... well, I had intended him to be an orc, but Pp, who is versed in these matters, thinks he is an ogre. With a kitten friend. (Pp says: "You said you were going to paint a monster, but you have painted the world's SOFTEST ogre!" Which is, I suppose, true.

(I didn't paint the ogre in art class, he just came to me as an idea one evening.)

A peacock!
I am rather pleased with this because I think it's the first thing I've ever made with coloured pencils that actually has a decent depth of colour and doesn't look too stiff. Background is brusho again, and then the detail is all Inktense pencils, overpainted with a waterbrush to bring out the colours.

And here are three dwarves fighting an acrylic dragon!
( Read more... )

I made a card for my Mum for mother's day too, and took it over to her today, but I forgot to photograph it. Hey ho.

On Saturday I found some pheasant tailfeathers while walking along the River Walkham, and brought them home thinking the kitties would like them. This was apparently the best decision ever: Gothmog keeps bringing me tailfeathers to throw for her (they aren't the easiest things to throw, but if you throw them like a dart, with the hard bit first, they will travel several feet.)

More wind than we thought on the river today, so we were only out an hour and then quickly headed back with the aid of the breeze behind us for an icecream (or in my case, a sorbet : one scoop of kiwi and one of gooseberry fool). Now my shoulders are aching so I'm quite glad we called it a day early.

Painting the First: Still Life With Kitten.

Gothmog kitten is a menace around paintbrushes, so here she is, being a nuisance among tubes of paint and stained bits of kitchen paper. :-D

She's sitting next to me on the sofa just now, fast asleep hugging a tube of permanent alyzarine crimson...

( Not much like the other one )

In other news, I wrote some things!
I wrote a second chapter for All Our Old Follies, Come 'Round Again, as a collaboration. Dragonst0rm got Celebrimbor and Elrond into a very dark situation, I sent Celebrian and a dog to get them out of it.

And then this one: Kintsugi, was suggested by some anon on Tumblr. It's about Nerdanel.
I think Ariana wanted something really silly, but she got Sing all ye joyful, now sing all together! which is not, I suspect, as silly as she had hoped. It's about young Arwen being grumpy.
I have started writing A Golden Voice, about Maglor meeting someone who will eventually be his wife, for Martial_quill. She doesn't have a name yet, though I know she is from Hithlum, from the Mithrim area, and likes horses. I find naming textual ghosts hard.

As you can see, I do not put a lot of work into titles....

We were working on paintings of rivers and reflections the last couple of weeks. I painted the River Lynher in spring. Then I added a flower: narcissus poeticus. Then I added a Narcissus and Echo. I'm still not sure if this was a good idea or not, though I do like the original narcissus flower.

( Read more... )

I painted this incredibly fast, so I'm really pleased how well it has come out.

The Sleep of Yavanna (with special appearance from a friendly plant with tentacles)( Read more... )

JRR Tolkien & Bilbo Baggins strolling along Merton Street, Oxford after the rain, smoking their pipes.

The exercise was supposed to be a seasonal one about how to paint wet pavement reflecting evening lights, since the rain is here for the autumn. I'm not sure I entirely got the wet reflected light as shiny as it could be. but I'm quite pleased with the cobbles and the figures. Also pleased that I managed to restrain myself from drawing 999 details into the buildings and just going for light and shadow.

Also, here is Rosie Roo putting on a fine display of Celtic Knotwork Legs.

We were supposed to be learning about painting misty rivers. I have an ample supply of my own photos of those for reference, so I dug out a number of them, and put them on an old minilaptop that is ideal for this purpose, since it doesn't have enough disk space to apply Windows updates and therefore isn't really safe to connect to the internet, but is fine for browsing photos off a USB stick. Which is just what I need in the art class church hall, which has no wifi, and barely even a mobile signal. But I forgot that the dratted thing won't start unless the battery is charged, so instead this is adapted from a photo of Glastonbury Tor that someone had clipped out of a newspaper. With some added water.

Pp asked if there was anything I'd like him to bring back from his recent driving holiday in Scotland. I said, 'yes, a tube of Prussian Blue'.
So he did. Now I have lots of Prussian Blue, I painted this:

"Frodo and Sam halted and sat silent in the soft shadows, until they saw a shimmer as the travellers came towards them.

There was Gildor and many fair Elven folk; and there to Sam’s wonder rode Elrond and Galadriel. Elrond wore a mantle of grey and had a star upon his forehead, and a silver harp was in his hand, and upon his finger was a ring of gold with a great blue stone, Vilya, mightiest of the Three. But Galadriel sat upon a white palfrey and was robed all in glimmering white, like clouds about the Moon; for she herself seemed to shine with a soft light. On her finger was Nenya, the ring wrought of mithril, that bore a single white stone flickering like a frosty star. Riding slowly behind on a small grey pony, and seeming to nod in his sleep, was Bilbo himself."
—
Return of the King : The Grey Havens

The class were doing Nocturnes again, emphasis on clouds in the moonlight this time. I made this pretty much in one class (did a lttle touching up of the clouds & moon later) and I am very pleased with it!

It goes rather well with the thing I wrote for the Tolkien reverse summer bang : a Hobbit Movieverse AU story: Dragon, Ghost, King and Bowman. The artist I was writing for seems to have vanished from the face of the internet at the moment: I hope they will like it when they finally re-surface, but in the meanwhile, I'm counting this as having made my own art treat :-D

I have a pile of things that I made that were Secret, because people were writing stories for them. But they are no longer Secret, and here they are!

Fimbrethil & Fangorn, in their younger days, Ent and Entmaiden.
And then, an elder Fimbrethil meets a pair of hobbit children.
( Read more... )

No art class pics for a couple of weeks because I've been working on this, which is rather complex and took several sessions. The idea was to choose three items that 'represent yourself' and paint a still life of them. Still life is definitely NOT my thing,but I thought I'd learn stuff from doing this this, and selected the 'items' with the idea of learning techniques in mind.
( Read more... )

Colin the Art thought this was good and said I should put it in the village show. I might, if I had a frame for it, but I don't seem to have one that is the right size.

His lordship is over all the substances of which Arda is made. In the beginning he wrought much in fellowship with Manwë and Ulmo; and the fashioning of all lands was his labour. He is a smith and a master of all crafts, and he delights in works of skill, however small, as much as in the mighty building of old. His are the gems that lie deep in the Earth and the gold that is fair in the hand, no less than the walls of the mountains and the basins of the sea.

More acrylic pourings overpainted with a face, and this time I used Indian Ink in a spray bottle on the poured wet paint to do the darkness in the corners, which seems to have worked quite well. I liked the effect enough that I bought some more indian ink, in yellow, blue and vermilion red, to put in my spare spray-bottles. Ink is excellently cheap compared with paint and pouring medium (pouring medium is quite expensive for some reason), and I like the way ink squirts and drops.

Pp suggested that I make more poured acrylic portraits of the Ainur, so here is Manwë.

We were doing 'crowd scenes' and the tutor suggested I try a battle scene. By coincidence, I'd just drawn a battle scene with pen and ink so I decided to try re-drawing it with the support of Colin the Art, changing the things he suggested. As usual it has photographed badly - contrast around the edges has been lost - but I'm still pretty pleased with it. It's a battle of Elves, Dwarves and orcs. The orcs are losing. Hurray! I'm particularly pleased with Colin's suggestion that I add an elf-archer on foot bottom right, so that the Dwarves become clearly short people (on goats) rather than simply breaking the perspective.

And the rescue that I adopted Rosie from has a christmas card competition, so I decided to make a very unseasonally festive image for that. I don't know if it will be lurchery enough for them, but I tried!

I'm sure I've tried to paint bubbles before but when I tried to find the post about it I could not. I have not tagged very consistently, I fear. Anyway, I'm pretty sure these bubbles are better, and they are certainly much bigger.

I had this old landscape hanging about which I had painted years ago and abandoned half-made as boring, so I re-painted the sky - which has lost some detail by being photographed, because of course it has, the distant mountains and the foreground shadow, and then tried sticking some bubbles over it, since most of the rest of the class were still doing droplets, but I'd got bored with those. I decided to keep some of the images reflected in the bubbles in my reference photos, and just adapt them a bit to suggest they were reflecting things other than the background. Pan-dimensional bubbles? Bubbles in the space-time continuum? Something like that!

Profile

bunn

June 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 05:35 pm

Entries tagged with acrylics

Arty Stuffs (with a side order of mourning for words)

This week in art class: angry little ponies.

Daughters of the Rivers

A selection of Arty Stuffs

A Floral Portrait

This week in art class...

Random Things

Two strangely unlike paintings.

Narcissus & Hildorien

Today's painting of a lady with nipples

This week in art class : wet pavements. Also, dog leggies.

Isle of Avalon

Aha, now I have lots of Prussian Blue!

Dragon over Laketown

A sudden pile of Tolkien Art.

In which I paint a still life

Aulë : The Great Smith

More acrylic pourings

Two arty stuffs

This week: Bubbles