Highland scene

Acrylic 16"x12" mainly painted using knife.
The scene is loosely based on Glencoe.
Completed 17 March 08.

"Inktense" one-day course

I went to a one-day course at the Appin Art Group about how to use the recently introduced Derwent Inktense pencils. We had demos from the tutor Tony Hogan and opportunities to practice using the medium.


(Remember to click on the images to view larger)

Below are my learnings and thoughts about Inktense.

Inktense look like ordinary colouring pencils. The pigment is a solid, water-soluble acrylic. Your picture won't look very impressive at first if you simply draw using the pencils. But add water from a wet brush to the lines and vibrant colour floods out, mixing and blending under the control of your brush. The final colour will be more intense than the solid tip of the pencil appears so its useful to keep an example palette handy.

Tony showed several ways of using the Inktense pencils - a typical painting would probably utilise them all. The pencils are generally used like watercolour pencils.
This means -
1) the colour can be drawn straight on to the paper and water added for strong acrylic-like effects;
2) the ink can be transferred to the brush by stroking the tip of a damp pencil, to add emphasis or to draw with the brush;
3) use it like watercolours by drawing a dry paper palette swatch then lifting the paint onto the wet brush for painting.
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Strong acrylic technique.

eg a mountain scene - draw bold strokes using several colours with gaps between. Use a wet brush to stroke over. The colour floods out and intensifies while adjacents mix and blend. Good for general effects; harder to control for accuracy. If you are looking for accuracy of representation use the watercolour method (below) to lay down an underpainting and build up from it. You can paint light over dark with Inktense, but obviously life is easier if you don't have to do that. The technique is also good for large areas of underpainting in one colour before doing more detailed work using paint as below. (NB Inktense can be used this way on dark, even black paper.)
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Watercolour technique.

On a spare piece of paper roughly draw some swatches of each colour. Use a brush to wet one half and draw the colour out to see different intensities. Then using a clean, damp brush rub it over the colour to lift some from the swatch at the intensity you desire and apply to the picture. You must wait a short while for the colour to dry then you can add another layer of colour. This good for building up intense colour using glazing technique. Remember to always clean the brush.
Bear in mind that the painted result will be more intense towards that part applied with the tip of the brush and this can result in unwanted strong edges. Not really a problem unless you don't notice it. Like watercolours it can be difficult to hide the edge later. Unlike watercolour though you can apply a stronger opaque colour over it (or cover with some white acrylic paint and restart the area).
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Wet tip technique. Dampen the tip of the pencil. This softens the paint and it can e lifted off onto a brush. Useful for getting stronger colour onto the brush than the palette method. You can also use the pencil tip to apply colour directly. It tends to be pretty intense colour if applied directly though. One use of this trick is to add snow to tops of mountains - dampen the end of the white pencil then "roll" the pencil across the picture - don't draw as it won't work - its a kind of dabbing process which adds highlight spots.
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My practice piece of work done during the course

Not very exciting, but a useful demo of how the intensity can be varied and colours overlaid - especially useful in this scene with the water reflections.

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Back home, I made this piece

"Late afternoon, Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland"
Done on acrylic paper 12"x8". It's nearly all Inktense with some of the white highlights on the waves added using neat acrylic paint.
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Overall Inktense should be a useful addition to one's art box - especially for plein aire painting. Combine Inktense with a Pentel Water Brush* and this could be one of the most convenient sets of kit for outdoor painting.
Steve Eccles, March 08.

*This is a synthetic tipped brush with refillable water chamber. Eliminates need for water jars etc. In the Pentel UK online catalogue its code is "Water Brush Product Code: FRH."

"Natural Forms"

"Natural Forms"
Size A2 This an exercise to use pencil, ink and charcoal.
The objects should show some natural textures.
Hopefully you can see seaweed, a shell, an onion, some potatoes, a dried Honesty plant stem lying down and some dried wheat and allium heads in the vase. Behind the vase is a wood log and on the window ledge a cyclamen plant sits beside a copper kettle.

A couple of A6 sketches

Poinsietta in a pot.


Cottages, Benderloch.

Barn at Benderloch

This Barn is at Selma, Benderloch, by the track leading down from the church to the beach. I painted it in Feb07 as part of an internet art group challenge. The setting is in summer with a bit of artistic licence.
Details: Painted in acrylics on heavy paper 16"x12".
I mainly used a knife with some finishing and glazing using brushes.

American Bald Eagle with a Fish

An American Bald Eagle with fish. Painted as the Nov07 web group challenge. I started this as a pen-and-ink drawing and decided to add colour using pastels. A4 size.

Bald Eagle - how I painted it

Click on the Speech Bubble at lower left of the video to turn on the subtitles.

Bald Eagle more detail

Click on the image below to see the photos in a larger format the select Slideshow to read my comments on the images.

Painting project - American Bald Eagle with fish

Burano Canal, Venice

Acrylic, mainly painted with knife 10"x8".

Mangastera Beach mosaic

This is another kind of digital "painting". I took the photo of my original Mangastera Beach painting (see below) and put it through a computer program called Easy Mosaic. It uses other pictures to produce the mosaic effect which become visible when you enlarge the resulting image. The file it makes is too large to load here. If you copy the larger version of this image you should be able to enlarge it and get a better idea of the effect. Even then the compression doesn't really do it justice. It was an amusing exercise but I don't think I'll do it again. There's a much better example here which uses a web player to good effect by letting the viewer keep zooming in to see pictures made from pictures, which in turn are made from pictures.

Sea & Island - a digital creation

This was "painted" using a digital art program called Twisted Brush which members of my internet art group are all playing with. The 'beaten silver' look was applied later using Photoshop.

Mangersta Beach

"Mangersta Beach on Isle of Lewis" in pastels 16"x12".

White-tailed Deer

White-tailed Deer
Pastel 16"x12" from a photo of the partially hidden deer. The grasses in the source picture were more of a distraction than an interest - which is reasonable since the deer was using them as camoflage - so I've changed that to try to give the impression that the deer is standing to the side of a "path" through a field of swaying corn (or something like that!).

Abruzzo Abstract

Abruzzo abstract. August 2007.
Pastel on paper. 30x30 cm. (approx. 12"x12")
Inspired by a castle in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

Roller (1)

This is an acrylic I'm currentky working on.

Art group challenges

This was the result of a challenge posed by an internet art group to produce a work from a photo they supplied - but done in just one session. I used pastels - don't know the location, but guess probably USA.


I called this acrylic piece "Glen Presto" as it was done fairly quickly just using paints which were "leftovers" on my palette.


This is a charcoal and white chalk work on paper. The scene is from a 1960's photo of a steam train leaving Benderloch station. The challenge was to "extend" the composition onto the mount or frame.

Dusk Fishing Lad.

My attempt at making a rough copy of Walter Dendy Sadler's - Fishing at Twilight.
Pastel on board approx 14"x12". May 07. The lower picture is a copy of the original.

Abstract - Wave

Skywaves

A piece of found art. This time its the sky where there were some interesting clouds as sunset approached. I took a photo, manipulated it on the computer then turned it upside down.

Thanks

Many thanks to everyone (especially Coral) who has sent comments on my art either via this site or directly. All your comments are helping me to develop my fledgeling artistic aspirations.


This is a pastel study of Buchaille Etive (near Glencoe) which I'm currently working on.

Please continue to let me know what you think!
Steve.

Fruit 'n veg still life

Acrylic version

Pastel version


A random display of lemon, lime, apple tomatoes, carrot and onions.
Art class 6 March 07.

Lighthouse

We see the lighthouse across a stormy sea as the waves break onto the cliff face.
Inspired by the photo below. Acrylic and knife then varnished.
March 07.

Lighthouse - inspiration

This is the photo which inspired the "lighthouse" painting above.
Its a close-up photo of the remains of paint on my palette.
Serendipity as inspiration?

Two yachts, three birds

March 07. Mixed media. Gouache and emulsion paint on card. First I did a basic underpaint with blue emulsion, then a torn piece of blue paper was pasted on to form the mountain range followed by loosely brushed gouache for the clouds and foreground.

Moonlit mountain and stag

A tonal study in blue,
Acrylic on canvas. 20Feb07

Updating the blog.

Feb 07.
I've updated to the new Blogger system and have taken the opportunity to add some more pictures from the last year. As you'll see I'm being a bit more adventurous in my use of materials and have occasionally used the computer as an art tool for part of the creation of a picture.

The blog has now had over 600 viewings (thank-you!) and below is a picture of the breakdown of recent visits by country and percentage.




Remember to click on the pictures to view enlarged.

Taynuilt in May

I was sitting on the jetty at Taynuilt, Argyll with the summer evening art class when I painted this. The light was terrific and the water of Loch Etive was a deep blue.
Acrylic May 2006.

Ashness Bridge, Lake District.

A pastel picture of Ashness Bridge in the English Lake District.
I did this from a photo published by a friend on his blog.
Pastel on board, Jan 2007.

More 'found art' - "Cliff "

Taken from a larger painting I made of an island scene.
I rather like it - but then I'm biased. For now I call it "Cliff" as I feel I'm looking at the top of a coastline; but then again it might be looking down on a wave breaking on a beach...

Waterflow - Shetland

This is a piece of "found art". The original was an acrylic painting of breaking waves in Shetland. This is a small part of that image with some computerised colour enhancement.

Isle of Skye dawn

Dawn over a loch on the Isle of Skye.
Afraid I don't know the location. I used a picture at the art class. Acrylic.

Lomond - a study in blue.

An acrylic study simply using shades of blue paint.
The view is from the south of Loch Lomond, near Balloch, looking north.

Found scene - A.

I call this "Found Art" as it is made from a photo of the remains of paint on a palette.
Cropped and softened in Photoshop I could see a picture - reproduced below - then others suggested it looked more like a Turner land-and-sky impression when turned the other way.

Found scene - B.

This was how I saw the original picture - as a breaking wave.

Grey Mull

The Isle of Mull seen from Argyll College window on a grey, damp, May evening.

Midsummer sun 2.

Midsummer sunset, Tralee Bay.
Acrylic on board.

Midsummer sun 1.

Midsummer sunset, Tralee Bay.

Acrylic on board.

Winter track.

Winter track to Castle Farm,
Benderloch. Gouache.

Castle Sween on the west coast of the Mull of Kintyre, Argyll.
Acrylic.

Video Art, Edinburgh.

Below is a piece of video art I made on a recent visit to Edinburgh.
It is suitable for family viewing and lasts about six minutes.
If you would like to watch on a larger screen or to download the video for free, just click on the Google icon (lower right corner of video screen).

Princes Street in Edinburgh

A piece of video art by Steve Eccles. - I'd been looking around several Edinburgh galleries' winter exhibitions and was fascinated by some video installations. Its a few year since I did any film or video work - the usual travelog sort of movie - and thought this new approach to the medium would be worth an experiment. The tools are so simple now as even modest digital still cameras can record reasonable quality short videos. I had an idea for a short film - how to illustrate that being partially colour blind I sometimes have to concentrate on odd details in a scene, which can lead to interesting effects in my artwork. So I decided to ignore the usual grand views of Edinburgh Castle and the gardens and concentrate on the street and what happens there - especially since last year's changes banning the daytime use of the road by private cars. So armed with a tiny Exilim X60 camera and my walking stick (plus my idea) I took a walk along Princes Street, shot some video and stills and completed the set with some views from my hotel room (which happened to overlook the street). That evening I put most of the movie together in the hotel room, using an Acer tablet computer, and finalised it later at home. I now present the finished version of "Princes Street in Colour". All the sounds are "real time" and the optical effects deliberate. I find it intriguing that to get the best aberrations I needed to start with the best quality video. Obviously the quality would have been higher if I'd used a tripod and a pro video camera - but I wouldn't been able to get the shots I wanted if I had to lug all that gear around then set it up. Being able to film with such compact equipment as the Exilim camera is an exciting development in movie production and I intend to experiment further. Steve Eccles, Jan 2007.

Pencil sketch June 06

A hot afternoon at Claydon Hall, a National Trust property near Oxford. I liked the balance of the tree and the church against the squared off front of the hall.

Loch Etive jetty.

A pencil sketch based on a 1900s postcard print. November 06.