Portrait of Cato is finished

 Very excited nowner of this dog. I showed her along the way WIP photos and now it is finished. I hope she will like it.

second 2d Needle felting portrait finished

 Finally this portrait is finished. It is only my second one. It was a bit of a struggle but I learned a lot.

needle felting 2d portrait

 The face is ready and I will start to build up the curly hair and the ears.

another step.

  The eyes are almost there. I started adding longer hair to the cheek.

second 2d needlefelting portrait.

 Just startet on my second portrait. Just tiny pieces if wool and a special needle to attach the wool on a piece of 100 % woolfelt.

Still a lot of work to do. The eyes must sparkle and then ..... the fur. A real challenge.

2D Needlefelting portrait

 It was time to explore other possibilities of working with wool.

This is a portrait of my darling dog, Chihuahua. His name is Mickey. When he was a puppy he had such big ears so I named him Mickey Mouse.

To make such a portrait of wool you need needlefelting wool. Sometimes only a hair at the time. So very timeconsuming. Totally different of painting portraits of animals. But in a way it is not. The fact I have a lot of experience in working with paint and pastelpencils in drawing and painting portraits I felt confident about working with colors.

I hope you like him.

 This is how it started. Tiny pieces of wool, slowly building up.

New hobby: reborning babydolls

 Just started a new hobby: reborning babydolls.

It is also painting but instead on canvas or paper you paint on vinyl. You buy the vinyl limbs and head en paint on the surface so you will achieve a real looking skin.

Just like with fine artpainting you bring on many, many transparant layers of a special acrylpaint. What I like about this new adventure is that I have to learn a lot of new techniques. I only work with 3 primary colors: red, blue and yellow. For the creases I add some umber to the paint mix and i use some white for the nails. That's it.

I use Ultimate Fusion paint.

Indeed a challenge. Furthermore with the finest mohair en micro feltingneedles I am going to insert hair by hair to give the head a real babylook. This doll has such a beautiful skul that I leave hem bold. But the second one will get hair.

I also love to knit, crochet and sew babyclothes. So this new hobby is so divers.

This doll is the first one I made.

small things for the dollhouse

I love small things and I love to make them.
This tiny baking stuff are made out of polymerclay.
They are only a couple of centimeters in size, real 1/12.

needle felted cat

First cat I made. 21cm, tail not included. So much fun but also many many hours till the fur was added.

tiny portrait of my little chihuahua

tiny book for dollhouse

I've made a tiny book 1/12 for my dollhouse.
It is a childrenbook 2,2 cm x 1,8 cm with 24 pages and on each page beautiful drawings.
The story is about Victoria Plum.
I want to make more for the bookcase and perhaps sell some.

drawing of an eye

This drawing in 15x20cm so very large and therefor very detailed.
I used Bristol smooth paper, derwent sketching pencils, mechanical penils 0.5 and 0,3 mm, tortillons (often), Tombow eraser, kneading eraser.
So much fun I had.

portrait of a lovely elderly dog

After many years I took my pastelpencils up to draw this portrait

two new portraits

Pencil drawings, different subjects and different techniques.

MAGNOLIA FLOWER in graphite

I used 2 pencils and 2 clutch pencils both HB and 2B, a kneaded eraser and a tortillon. Furthermore I drew this flower on Arches Hotpress Watercolor paper.

Manchester terrier

Manchester Terrier graphite pencil

drawing and watercolor of fresia

I made a watercolour and drawing of the same stem of Fresias.
The position of the drawing was not easy to do and I am not satisfied about the result. It would have been easier if I had choosen somewhat the same position like the watercolour painting has.

just a little feather

Black and white exercise of a little feather.
Only used black watercolour paint and a small size 0 paint brush on HP Arches paper.

Artichoke aquarel

Again, an excercise with a limited palet of 6 colors.
Green, green, green. So many greens with only 2 blues and 2 yellows and a tiny bit of red.

Primula aquarel

I used a limited number of colors to paint these leaves.
A great excercise in how many greens you can create by using only Ultramarine, Phatalo blue, Camboge, Winsor Red to tone the greens down en a tiny bit of Lemon for the flowers.
I used Arches HP paper and Rosemary and Co, UK brushes, most spotters.

Iris rhizone

Just for fun this drawing. Those roots look like a funny animal.

portrait of a man in graphite pencil

I just finished this portrait. It is a gift for the birthday of my teacher, it is a portrait of her husband.
Very difficult to take good pictures of such a drawing. The paper is really white, a bit blueish I think. I always have to alter the photos and I always am not satisfied about the result. Of course every screen of a computer, laptop and such is different and therefor pictures are darker or lighter than at my screens.
It seems that my screens are a bit light in comparison to the ones of others.
So I place 2 pictures, in different ways altered.
Of course I like the original the most but once I gave the portrait away I only have the photo to look at. That's why I want good photos of my work.
The top one is softer, the bottom one is clearer but a bit harsh and a bit too much contrast. I do not know which one I find the best in comparison to the original drawing.

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Tiny cyclaam drawing

I just finished a new drawing.A clyclamen. This is a tiny one.
The leaves and flowers are only 4 cm.
I have the plan on doing the assignments of the SBA online course on my own.
So here is the second one for the first assignment.

Pelarganium botanical drawing

After I have been busy for a while with taking macro photos I undertook a new adventure: teaching online botanical drawing for beginners.

Just finished writing the text and drew sketches and drawings for the online course.
The content of the online course is 47 pages with more than 80 pictures and 34 excercises.

It was a huge challenge.
The drawing of the Pelarganium is placed on the last page of the course.
As always: very difficult to take a scan of this drawing like this, but here it is.

Sonchus oleraceus close up photos

I love those fluffy balls full of seeds. Just ordinaire weed and we pull it out in our garden.
But the flowers are lovely and so are the seeds flying in the wind.

I took these photos with a macro lens 90mm and my Sony a300.
For the photo of the seedball I used an umbrella and flash.
With the umbrella I covered the flash to get soft light.

Tomorrow I receive some extension tubes. I want to take even more close up/macro photos.
A real challenge but I love to experiment.

watercolor flower

The last 2 years I concentrated on painting fine art with oilpaint.
But Spring is in the air and so it is time to paint some flowers with watercolor paint.
So difficult to photograph though.

a beautiful cock almost finished

It took many many hours to get this result.
On the first photo you see the underlayers of umber and white.
On the second photo I added color, also many layers building up depth.
Still not yet finished, the white feathers need another layer and tweaking. You still can see the underlayer of umber and white shining through. The rest of the animal is ready (I think) :-)

OILPAINTING old woman portrait black and white

A while ago I finished this portrait of an old woman. I found the photo on the internet.
The woman is suffering from Alzheimer and I was struck by her eyes.
You can see her confusion, not understanding.
I try to catch her expression with painting her in black and white. Her world is I think without colour, without details.
I hope you feel the same as I do.
This portrait is 20x15cm and painted on an MDF panel.
It took many many hours and I love to paint all those creases and folds of het skin.
A real challenge and I learned a lot.

STUDIES oilpaint after a painting of Bartner

I started a project for the Summer months to practise with oilpaint and most of oil with color.
So I took a beautiful photo of a painting of Scott E. Bartner
It is such a beautiful detailed portrait.
I took 4 canvasses of 20x20cm and transferred a drawing on them with black ink.
The first one I made it in a warm black/grey/white= Ivory black, raw umber and flake white. The three tiny highlights on the tip of the nose and in the eyes are Titianwhite. I love Flake white, it is not so harsh like Titian.
I took 3 photos of the painting process and here they are.
The first photo on top was disappointing, the white was absorbed and the picture became far too dark.
I shrubbed the paint into the canvas.

 The second photo: I added more white paint and light grey tones and added more details

 Still not satisfied. Too much oneven coloring and tones.
So I mixed a big pile of the Ivory black and Raw Umber, flake white and 7 or 8 mixes grey with it, so I would get the same mix of paint (color and tone) everywhere.
And now she is finished.

And then to practise with color I started 3 canvases with different color backgrounds and different approaches.
The one on the left I put as a backgroundcolor a medium tone fleshcolor on it.
The middle canvas stayed white and I used Ivory black and Titian  for the first layers, still a lot of work has to be done.
The portrait on the right I put as a background color Ocre (Oker)
I added some color to the drawings but I found the colors too harsh, too much, so I mixed a very light fleshcolor with flake white and this almost transparant paint I painted it over the whole portrait to mute it a bit..
Not the background though. On the background I added some color.
THIS IS A GREAT ADVENTURE

second and third layer Old Master Technique 2 oil pantings

After long hours painting I show you the result of the second layer on the painting of the portrait of the dog and the third layer on the painting of the portrait of the little girl.
A lot of work to do.

underlayers of 3 little paintings "Old Master Technique"

For the Summer months I started 3 little paintings (15x20cm) I want to work on them without the help of my tutor. The next course will start in September.

On the painting of the Waterlily I worked 7 days and many many hours of painting only this first underlayer.
The background with the detailed leaves took very long to paint. The Waterlily has other challenges. The white and the shadows are not easy to get right
Many other underlayers will be added before I will start to ad layers of color.

 

Yesterday I worked on the face of this portrait of a little girl after a painting of Bougeaurau. Today I will work on the hair and the bottom.

And soon I will begin to work at the portrait of the dog.

I like to work on several different paintings at the same time so I do not have to wait till a layer is dry.

First layer of two new oil paintings, 15x20cm

I started 2 new oil paintings, one of a portrait of a dog and one of a little girl after the well known painter bouguereau. I love the paintings of this painter.

Only the first layer is added to the pieces of MDF. They both are 15x20 cm.

The color I used for these fine art painting method is raw umber and Titian white.
In the next layers, after this layer is dry, more details are added and I try to give it more depth and by adding darker color and white.

I love the color mixed with the umber and white.
It looks like an old photograph.

I want to paint  the portrait of the little girl only in using the umber and white and only add in the portrait of the dog some warmer brown/reddish.
Also the white is not really white but contains a lot of color other colors, cool and warm.
A real challenge.

But I am so proud that I managed to get all the things in the right places.
The painting of the dog sofar took me 4 days of hard work, but I loved it!

old master oilpainting still life finished, overview of all the stages

Finally I finished a still life. 20x30cm.
It took a long time to paint this in the style of the old masters.
Monique Eysink, my very skillfull and patient teacher have learned me a lot about the proces of fine art painting.

This is the result of 30 lessons I had for 1 year and Oh boy! I learned so much in this year.
Often I had the feeling that it was too difficult to master this old master technique.
And I still have so much to learn about colour and putting layers of (transparant) colour on top of each other.
I will concentrate on that for the next year.

But for the first time I feel I finally can paint!
Not smearing oilpaint on the surface but handling the oilpaint and the brushes the right way.
I started already 2 other paintings, look at my next posts and I start another one tomorrow at my last lesson of the season.
Thanks very much!!! Monique Eysink. Till after the summer holidays. I already look forward to it.