Girl in a Mangrove Forest

Going back to Edinburgh Art College in a couple of weeks, for my final year (eeks!). Will be doing the degree show next year, which is exciting. Been thinking about ideas for new paintings, sticking with the theme of "figures in the landscape"for now. Further to my travels to the Florida Everglades earlier in the year, I am still feeling inspired by the mangrove forest we kayaked through and the feeling of being in right among such an amazing natural phenomenon.

I did the below watercolour painting for my current show "Paperwork 2" , in the Edinburgh Fringe. (It's now sold, yeah!), but am thinking about some larger acrylic paintings inspired by the mangroves.

"Coming through the Mangroves"

(watercolour, acrylic ink & gouache)

Been working on a little drawing this week, of my youngest daughter when we were in a mangrove forest next to a small beach. I like this theme - it's kind of a metaphor for the challenge of navigating through life. Here's how it took shape - starting with a sheet of watercolour paper on which I dropped and sprayed some shades of green watercolour. I then drew on top with a black fineliner and also some black ink applied with a small stick and a brush.

Finally finished it off with some white ink applied with a drawing nib, and some white gouache (and blue watercolour pencil) on the T-shirt, to make it sing out.

"Girl in a Mangrove Forest"

(watercolour, pencil, ink, gouache)

I can see possibilities for a larger painting. Watch this space...

(UPDATE 2016 - I made a large body of work in late 2015 stemming from this little study: please have a look on my website at www.sheilachapmanart.com to see final paintings!)

Hanging the "Paperwork 2" show, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, 2015

Today I've been busy hanging the latest Fringe Art Exhibition I'm taking part in, with three artists colleagues Marion Barron, Ruth Thomas & Trevor Davies. This is our third show in the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  Hanging is pretty hard work - physical, a lot of measuring/mental arithmetic, and trying not to fall out with each other over which piece should go where! Once we get a good final arrangement which shows off everyone's work in the best light, it is quite satisfying though. Here's hope the viewing public like it!

 

Ruth & Trevor sorting out some fixings

 

 

Marion, adjusting with spirit level 

(My trampoline drawing "Jump" visible on right)

 

 

 

Marion in the back room, arranging a mosaic style hang on one wall

 

 

 

Drawing Pelicans

As a belated follow-up to my June post regarding "Working in a Series", here is how piece of paper 4 in the series ended up - drew the pelicans on top of the painted background in white acrylic ink. I like the contrast this has created. I saw so many beautiful birds in the Florida Everglades in February this year and I love the way you can easily see pelicans floating around together on the sea there in the same way you see common or garden seagulls floating about in Scotland. 

This piece, unsurprisingly named "Pelicans", along with other works featuring in recent blog posts, will be on sale in the forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe show "Paperwork 2", at the Edinburgh Ski club premises, 2 Howe St, Edinburgh from 21st - 31st August 2015.

  

Paint Lab - Working in a Series

Decided to approach my next piece of work from a different starting point. Inspired by Lab No. 27 from the great little book "Paint Lab" by Deborah Forman, I tore a large sheet of Saunders Waterford watercolour paper into six roughly equal pieces and, inspired by a photo of Paul and the kids leaning off a jetty in the Florida Keys, gave myself 30 minutes to quickly work in acrylic to block in some compositions and colour schemes, using a limited palette of three or four colours.

 

Here's what I ended up with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the next couple weeks I have been working on two or three of these further to develop them into small paintings. After a little while the third one above progressed to this stage:

After some more detailed work on the figure I ended up with this little picture:

   
In parallel I was also working on image 1 from the initial six studies. I first glazed the whole thing with a layer of  mid tone grey-blue through which I hoped the brighter colours would glow through in places. I then worked from dark to light to develop a three figure composition:

  After a bit more painstaking (!) work on the figures I felt the picture had reached resolution:

 
Looking back at the initial sketches it still always amazes me how these images evolve out of the paper and paint. It feels a bit like magic. I'm guessing other artists probably also get this feeling sometimes (on good days anyway!).  


Postscript
Initial sketch no.4 has a lovely velvety glowing colour in real life and rather than painting over it I'm planning on doing a white ink sketch of pelicans on top of it. Sketch 6 also evolved a bit further but did not entice me to finish itself (as yet). Maybe one day...
 

Great Blue Heron painting

Been struggling with this little painting of a great blue heron in the Florida everglades. Been through a few different stages.

STAGE 1

I started with the water using acrylic paint and turquoise blue acrylic ink sprayed with water to create runs. I then painted in the bird. Felt it needed something more at this point so I kept going. Splashed on some prussian blue wash around the bird to deepen the contrasts. 

Spattered in some bright green highlights to the water (using toothbrush and whipping a small headed brush through the air), then added some more highlights and detail to the body and head of the bird - trying to get the shape more right - and finally added some suggestions of waterside foliage to put the bird in a little more context. 

 

At this point, although I had planned to add some larger leaves to the foreground I decided to leave them out for the time being. Left the painting for a couple of days. Went back into studio and thought - actually it might be finished... But then the next day decided it did need something more in foreground, but not leaves. Going back to the original photographic source material I decided to add some sticky stalks to the left of the bird, to give more of the feeling of the bird wading through the grassy Everglades.  

The finished piece. I really loved seeing these birds up close in the wild, and hope that this painting does this lovely feathery guy justice.  The final painting is  29 x 39.5cm  and is destined for the Paperwork 2 show I am taking part in, in August (part of Edinburgh Fringe 2015).

Performance Costume Design at ECA Degree Show

Went to Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show yesterday. Some interesting stuff but as always my favourite section was the theatre costume design (even though I'm a painter!)

 

 

 

This Grasshopper outfit looked really great close up. My photo doesn't do it justice. Big sticky out tail at the back!

                                         (The hanging black thing is a swimming fish!)

 

 

All very creative and inspiring. Especially since I'm useless with a sewing machine...

 

Artist's Block aargh!

Been suffering with artist's block for a couple weeks or so. Probably result of the final push to get my last painting finished before my end of year assessment at Edinburgh Art college.  Have found that the book "Art & Fear" by D Bayles and Ted Orland is always helpful at such times and so been reading it again. Can highly recommend it for all artists, whatever stage they feel they are at in their artistic lives.  

Anyway, finally got my self going again and have launched into some new small paintings inspired by my holiday to Florida Everglades in  February. Have decided to try and capture the fun of me and my family experiencing all the cool wildlife and natural surroundings there.  

Also been restudying the work of two well-known Scottish artists I admire - Joan Eardley (for her paintings of Glasgow street children) and Barbara Rae (for her use of bright colours in the landscape). Love this blue gouache painting of the kids hanging out the window.

New blog resolution - post more!

Hi Blogger World,
I'm hoping to make my blog a bit more informative, and more regularly updated, from now on. 
I've been doing a lot of painting since Christmas and am hoping to keep up the pace. Here is one I finished last week - ~It's called "White Shoes" (Acrylic on canvas, 1m x 1.2m approx.). It's part of a body of work I've been doing concentrating on young trampolinists in training.  

For anyone out there who paints themselves and is interested in how images come about, this one is based on the following photo collage I created in Photoshop (from three separate photos of three different trampolinists jumping, at different times):

Wall Drawing Fun

Have had a very busy time this last week. I spent two enjoyable days making a giant wall drawing with my student colleague Kirstin Johnston. We worked organically to incorporate my drawings of jumping trampolinists with Kirstin's nature drawings. The final work seemed to achieve the sense of flowing movement we were trying to capture. Neither of us had ever done a wall drawing before and it was a great experience. (Need to rest my arms before doing another one though...) 

Kirstin against the blank wall!
 

Getting Started
 

Cracking on

Ta da!