Down at the Pedestal

Here goes...it's been a really long time since my last post and it's fair to say I've not done a lot since then.  This is my latest project, Ben's son Charlie playing football at the new home of Downley Dynamos, outside the pavilion that we are attempting to restore.

This has taken quite a while to put together and I moved well away from the sketchy style of recent times, though i intend to get back to it. The plan with this was to create something where it wasn't really clear how the tones had been created, which is more true for the Charlie than the background, which was deliberately light in tone.

Portsmouth harbour

This is a little something I knocked up whilst waiting for our ferry to leave from Portsmouth harbour. The harbour is full of navy vessels and I think this one had Bristol down the side of it. It looked like a group of sea cadets went on board as we left port.

La Boutinardiere, Pornic, France - Fishing hut

Did this little painting/sketch whilst on my holidays in Loire Atlantique. They have a peculiar way of fishing and all along the coastline the have these large huts on stilts with massive nets that they lower into the sea when the tide comes in. There are huge rocks down at the beach and I took he childrens life in my hands by trying to scale them - very exciting!

Tastertainment May 2013

I think the group brought their A game today. Lots of memorable performances and I did my thing near the front. I'm starting to get the hang of skin tones, but they a still very difficult with the watercolour pencils.

I've left one of the pictures unpainted with watercolour.

Oh, and come and find me on twitter @rorysketch I'll start publishing my updates there.

Secret Dancer

This is what I've been working on lately. It's a dancer which is based on a painting taken from the Internet plus a photo of my niece in a similar pose. It was never intended to be a direct copy, in any case I think that the original was painted with some kind of permanent rose which isn't part of my collection of paints.

I started with a practice sketch which was some kind of combination of the 2 with some errors along the way, which probably helped later on.

The main painting is fairly small, roughly 10 inches by 10 inches and the results a pleasing with lots of borrowing of blues and reds/oranges in the skin tones.

I listened to this song whilst painting it a few times and I think it links quite well to the painting as my neice looks similar (long hair basically) and plays the piano very well. See below for the links:-

http://open.spotify.com/track/4kjiVK4IZWYADcPQR8kzsh

http://youtu.be/Z2gUYEhtBKg

Oh, and come and find me on twitter @rorysketch I'll start publishing my updates there.

Subrosa5

Was invited out to band practice with a friends band Subrosa5.  Had a great time, sketching the guys and haven't been in a studio like this before - carpeted walls, the lot.  My ears are still ringing from the last 2 songs!

Please have a listen to them - I can personally recommend 'Malevolence'.

http://www.last.fm/music/Subrosa5

or if you're feeling generous download here...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Hellfire-Raves/dp/B0032IQ8CG/ref=dm_cd_album_lnk

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/subrosa5/id338368831

Dancer

This is a prep sketch for a painting of a dancer I'm working on. It's served it's purpose as the oil sketch fell a little odd and this is a useful guide for correcting it.

Portrait with 2 doves

This is a reproduction of an original by Jamil Naqsh, a Pakistani painter. I quite enjoyed doing this one and had to let the painting dry full on a number of occasions to get the right effect.

Theo

This is a portrait of a friend's child. I couldn't resist doing a portrait, the first one I've attempted, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It started off with a cracking photo that was taken during a drinks break in the football match we were playing, with light falling perfectly on to the child. It was the first nice day of the year following a prolonged period of cold and it was great to get out.

I first tackled getting the image as best I could right by constructing a framework using the top part of the nose as the reference point for everything else. Initially I got the background wrong, but it wasn't a big problem as lightening the painting was relatively straightforward. I've seen people do portraits in 2.5 hours that are great, but this was closer to 10.

Please refer to the blog entry on portraiture if you're interested.

Hope you enjoy it.

Old St John's Church

I guess this is a pen and watercolour sketch of St Johns Church. This building has now been taken over by the Arts4every1 group that I'm a member of.