meldrum artI paint these Naked Hands at lunch time, I take my time and invariably I overwork them, I get scared, I have too much time to think, I dab the brush 100 times too many. Life drawing is different, there I have only five or ten minutes to execute the watercolour, the result is a painting that contains life and energy. I am learning, in the mean time; here is a muddy, overworked Naked Hand.
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| Naked Hand 20130910. 9 x 14 cm Moleskin. |
It sounds like one of those bad newspaper headlines. As for the watercolour which took me two lunch breaks, – it’s all right, I learned a few things which is the point of drawing and painting these in the first place. I’m happy enough with the result, a mixture of success and failure.
Life Drawing starts again tomorrow, I’m really looking forward to starting, it feels like it was a very long time ago since the last session.
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| Naked hand holds stopwatch! 9 x 14 cm Moleskin. |
I gave this hand two washes and then stopped, I was planning to add a few more but realised that I was happy with it after two. It is interesting when one gets the message to stop. Sometimes, it comes too late of course.
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| Moleskin watercolour notebook, 9 x 14 cm. |
Lunch sketch painted in my mini-watercolour Moleskin.
I try and do a sketch or a painting during my lunch break at work as often as possible. I really would like to practice my figure painting but having pictures of naked people on my computer screen is a bit of a sensitive issue to say the least. So, I have found the solution – hands! Yes, naked hands! Nude hands! It’s genius, I can practice my watercolour skin tones and hand drawing at the same time. Only I see the naked truth.
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| The Naked Hand (24x32cm, Canson 200 g/m2) |
I learn so much each time I do a watercolour. I learn, that I should not draw so many lines, that I should be patient, that I should simplify what I see, that I should be more subtle with my tones and finally, that I should be more confident with my brush strokes.
This is a portrait of Micke Nybrink, he is a Trotting media journalist here in Sweden. Last week I created a web site in which he featured and this is where the image of him inspired me to paint him. You can see the website and his photo here if you like. It took me three lunch breaks to complete the painting, almost two hours I would guess.
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| Micke Nybrink |
Inspired by my watercolour sketches from the weekend I did another boat sketch today during my lunch break. I found my reference image on Google, I searched using the words, ‘Sailing and Archipelago’. The white foam created by the boat was achieved with office Tipp-Ex. 🙂
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| Lunch Sketch 20130702 |
I am currently at a web conference here in London. It’s cold and wet, but I guess that’s the way if should be. Anyway, I managed to squeeze in this watercolour sketch during the lunch break.
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| Chiswell Street, London |
