Stash Shopping

In July 2014, almost 18 months to the day, I first picked up a paint brush.  I had drawn before but never really painted before.  I have, so far, kept everything I have done. 

I decided, on this slightly loose anniversary to look at everything again, particularly at the sketches and media I don't often display.  I was surprised at what I found.

Watercolour and gouache

The still life pictures are much better than I remember them being.  I have always found water colour difficult and counter intuitive to use but I am quite pleased with these.

The circle is playing with the fibonacci sequence and produces quite a nice effect.  My favourite though is the tree.  I think I would do the ground and the distant tree differently if I did it again but I like the simplicity of it. 

Charcoal, pencil and charcoal pencil.

I have neglected these media of late, in favour of painting but seeing these again inspires me to go back to them.  The great advantage of them, is there is no entry barrier.  You just pick up the pencil, or charcoal stick or whatever it is,a piece of paper and off you go. It allows for easy experimentation. I am more drawn and prefer using charcoal pencil which suits my style more (the bottom right drawing for instance).  The easy flow of charcoal lends itself to abstraction.  I like the two figures top left.

Pastel

I started out with pastels before I started painting and it was this I used until I bought my own oil paints.  I come to them rarely now.

The main attraction for me is the smudging effect you can get with pastels as in the persimmon in the bottom left picture.  It is no coincidence that I am a fan of Japanese persimmon pictures.

There are I think two types of pictures I produce.  Those I produce for display and sale or as part of a planned series (like the patterns), and those I produce when I'm just messing around.  It is these later that this selection is drawn from.  This shows to me that such experiments were worth doing and revisiting them every so often can give new insights and ideas for what to do next.  I have for example started doing more still life as a result.