The good the bad & the ugly

thursday afternoon & evening were good... plenty of sketching... including a couple of special sittings, mainly outside the big bellied ladies chat room... I'm keen to experiment with my techniques... what i am trying to do now, is to use a couple of conventional shaded pencil sketches to establish form and shape.. this seems to help me find expression and personality onto this i usually like to finish with a few heavy darks to suggest a bit of details... like mouth, eyes and shadow in the hair... at this point the sketches neatly sort themselves into two distinct groups... simple & delicate successes or heavy & dull disasters... i never scan the disasters.. so girls not panic

the next and more spiritual step has become... getting out the water colours and mixing a very dilute neutral wash... i have favorite sable hair brush... it seems to know what i want to do... i like to use the first wash to halo around those areas that will become highlights... this first wash soaks into the paper quickly... so i have to look hard & let the shadows take on there own form... then a less dilute wash to add a bit more depth... every time I do this i'm never sure what will happen... this is the life and depth time for my watercolour... bad washes go straight into the bin... the good ones are given time to semi-dry... the dark washes can progressively have more colour... but i like to take time now... doing more looking than painting.. silly typographically challenged chatting seems to help keep my focus... at the moment, the final step is to use coloured pencils to add pure colour to bring out a few key details... the pure colour over a neutral wash is pretty magical... its the reason I can stop before I overwork the details to death, a majour problem in my earlier work... so that was the good

raw umber and ultramarine blue in watercolour washes 


the bad was of course yahoo... i've decided there are no excuses for its badness... I think yahoo is going downhill... fast... It is frustrating the hell out of me and a lot of those I sketch... so what to do about it? I don't know..!! but I'm open for suggestions... maybe google should taken them over...

the ugly... well that was me... my friends were horrified at my sketching all afternoon... dressed in my chinos and red jumper.. apparently I'm a fashion liability... so I've been forced to buy some new shirts and jeans... and run a number one clipper over my beard. so girls another reason not to panic.