Paul Paints Pastels

art show

2008-06-23T11:22:00.002+10:00

I forgot to say how the fire station art show went. It was good to see my paintings hanging up on the walls with others, and it's amazing how much of a difference a good frame makes as well. It was a good experience, but unfortunately I didn't sell anything. There's always next year :)

Apparantly not many paintings sold at this year's art show - only 19 out of around 300 sold. Still, the fire station managed to raise around $15,000 dollars, which isn't bad! The paintings that sold must have had large price tags on them :)

Local Exhibition

2008-05-19T15:53:00.003+10:00

I've framed three of my paintings, and am entering them in a local exhibition/art competition. It's going to be on the long weekend of the 7th, 8th and 9th of June, at the Belgrave Firestation. It's a fundraising art competition they have each year, with a commission taken from any paintings that get sold, to help them maintain their equipment, buy new firefighting equipment, and that sort of thing.
I'm always amazed at how much better paintings look when they have matting and framing around them. I'm quite pleased with how they turned out. I'm entering the Kookaburra, a Twelve Apostles painting, and the painting of the paddlesteamer, which I touched up and made more changes to.
It will be great seeing them hanging on walls with all the other paintings. I might even make a sale! Anyway, I'll mention how it turned out after the date.

My second blog

2008-04-28T15:34:00.002+10:00

Hi everyone. I've started a second blog, dealing with my journey into the world of making digital art, painting, drawings, etc, using a graphics tablet, digital pen, and my computer. You can view it by going to my profile, and a list of my blogs should be shown. Now I have two ways to make art!

Short Break

2008-04-21T09:12:00.002+10:00

Well, I've been looking through photo albums for more painterly scene insperation, and haven't found much. I've done a bit of sketching, but no painting. I've been a bit annoyed, because the Digital Pen Tablet I ordered through ebay hasn't arrived yet, and after reading the comments left for the shop I bought it from, I found a lot of people complained that it took up to a week before their items were even posted! So I guess I could be waiting for my tablet...

My parents are returning from a holiday to Tasmania later in the week, and I'll be looking through their photos to see if I can find some more pictures that say "paint me". I should probably go out somewhere myself, set up my paper and easel, and try some plein air painting, but it's cold and cloudly out there, and I've got heating in here :) So, I think I'll take a painting break. I think there's a Subscribe button at the bottom of the page, that notifies people when new posts are written in blogs, so if you want, you can click down there, and the next time I paint something, it should announce it :)

I'm hoping to get a few good paintings done in the next month or so, because there's a local art exhibition coming up in June I think, and I might get one of my paintings framed and enter it!

graphics tablet

2008-04-17T13:46:00.004+10:00

Hi guys. I haven't been up to much, art wise, today. I looked over some of my previous paintings with a 'fresh eye' and made some touch-ups, minor corrections, and that sort of thing. I'll try to remember to update the photos of paintings on this blog so they show the current images (my camera's batteries are flat at the moment and I've got to charge them).

On another note, I do a lot of computer graphics stuff, and I toyed with digital art for a while, but a mouse just doesn't cut it when trying to draw and paint on a computer. So, I've ordered a graphics tablet. It's like a flat mouse pad, and you have a special pen, and when you 'draw' on the tablet with the pen, you draw on your computer screen. It's supposed to work great with Corel Graphics Suite X3 (which is what I own) and I've read reviews by other artists, and watched some vids on youtube, and graphics tablets look pretty great!

What's better, is that I couldn't afford a $569 6"x8" Wacom Intuos 3 tablet (the leading brand) but I found a tablet that is almost identical, on sale at half price, for $85. I compared the specs on the two tablets, and they both can detect 1,024 levels of pen pressure, so you can draw softly or hard, they can both detect the tilt of the pen (like using a pencil, you can angle it down to shade, or point it down from above for fine lines).

The expensive Wacom Intuos 3 tablet has 8 programmable buttons on the tablet. My Manhattan 174459 tablet has an icon bar around the outside of the working area, with 42 hot-key icons on it, 16 of which are programmable to any combination of keys. The other icons are like icons on a computer program, for save, load, launching frequently used applications, etc, all just by tapping them with the pen. The Manhattan tablet can also detect the pen up to 15mm above the surface of the tablet, while the expensive Wacom only detects up to 6mm. About the only difference is that the Wacom tablet is battery-free using special technology, while the Manhattan requires a AAA battery.

So, while I need to use batteries, I get extra buttons for hot-key functions in my programs, artist reviews say it works great in Corel PhotoPaint X3 (my main graphics program), and a couple professional artist reviews said they actually stopped using their Wacom tablets, and now use a cheaper Manhattan for their tasks. (though a couple said they gave up on tablets, and went straight to expensive touch-screens.)

So, I can't wait to get it (hopefully arrives tomorrow) and see what digital artistry I can come up with. No breathing in pastel dust, no washing hands, no running out of paper or pastels... And if you make mistakes, just press CTRL-Z and the mistake goes away! It might not be physical art (unless it's printed, but prints aren't the same as original art anyway) but it's still art.

If it works well, I want to save up for a fancy Wacom Cintiq 21ux Tablet - which is a 21" touch screen the size of a large sketch pad that can be drawn onto using their digital pen - so creating digital art would be even easier, as you actually draw 'onto' the screen directly without having to use a tablet! However, buying that would be a long way off for me.

I'm thinking I'll start a second blog, and keep this one just for Fine Art, and the other just for Digital Art - as I want to keep this blog focussed on my journey with Dry Pastels.

Cumberoona

2008-04-16T11:25:00.003+10:00

"Cumberoona"
(c)2008 Paul J. Turner
Soft Pastels on Sand Coloured Paper

This morning I thought I'd paint a small, quick one - an old paddle steamer going along the Murray River in northern Victoria (Australia). This is one of the smallest paintings I've done, being about 1 1/2 A4 sheets of paper in size (not quite A3).

Spam / Virus Warning

2008-04-15T15:13:00.004+10:00

Someone's started spamming comments in my blog. So far the username I've been seeing is Fenridal - posting links to some virus thing. I looked at his profile, and it says he has a "Mario" blog. Clicking on his blog brought up the virus thing as well. He has a habit of posting "Please see here!" with a link to the virus thing. This is against Blogger terms of service, but I haven't worked out how to send Google info so they can ban the user. It brings up a yes/no window, and you're probably stuffed up regardless of what you click, so it's best to press CTRL-ALT-DLT and end the internet explorer application, so that it exits to the desktop without making any choices and getting who-know's-what stuff put onto your harddrive.
In the meantime, don't click on links in the comments on my blog, becuase the guy keeps sticking links in there. I'll delete them when I notice them, or any comments left that sound similar and link off of this site.

*UPDATE 16th April 08: The guy's changing his name now and still posting virus spam. I found the Report Abuse section in Help for these blogs, so now I'm reporting him every time he posts comments on here. I wish there was a Ban User button!

Among the Rock Pools

2008-04-15T13:57:00.009+10:00

Hi everyone. Last night I was thumbing through some old photo albums, and came across a scene with incredible lighting in it. I love contrast, and as it was a seaside scene, I thought, I just had to do it today.

I started off a little differently to normal. Usually I just pick up pastels and start rubbing them onto the paper, but I wanted to get the light/dark areas right. I began doing a tonal sketch in greylead pencil.

Then I drew a larger version of the sketch lightly in a black pastel pencil on the pastel paper.

And finally, I painted the picture! Before painting though, I pulled all the colours out of my pastel boxes, that I wanted to use in the picture, and arranged them in lines, from light to dark. I used the softer, muted colours for distant terrain, keeping it faint and faded, then as I got closer to the foreground, I selected bolder colours and painted sharper. I think it gave a nice 'distance' effect in this one.

"Among the Rock Pools"
(c)2008 Paul J. Turner
Dry Pastel on Medium-Grey Paper

Clouds over the sea

2008-04-14T16:17:00.006+10:00

"Clouds over the Sea"
(C)2008 Paul J. Turner
Dry Pastel on Medium-Grey Paper

I decided to just do a small, quick sketch today. Usually I paint on a half-sheet of the pastel paper I buy, this one was probably just a quarter. It's dark and moody outside today, so I went for something a bit moody, with grey clouds, grey sea, muted tones.

In the Country

2008-04-13T14:19:00.004+10:00

Well, this is my second non-beach scene in a row. I thought I'd paint some pictures that I wouldn't normally pick when painting. This morning I found a photo of an old stone hut out in the countryside. I had to do a few major composition changes to make it work - things weren't positioned very artistically, so I moved and re-scaled the water tank and shifted the building about, and removed a shed that was in the background. There were a lot of small rocks scattered among the foreground which I thought looked interesting to paint as well.

I took a number of photos of it, using flash, without flash, with lots of lights on, and had trouble capturing the original colours and tones in a photo, so this photo is the closest I was able to come to looking like the right colours. I've found that the camera 'auto adjusts' images when it takes a photo, which is why I've been having trouble matching colours and tones of photos to the real things. Anyway, here it is:

"In the Country"
(c)2008 Paul J. Turner
Dry Pastel on Medium-Grey Paper

Green Challenge!

2008-04-12T14:22:00.004+10:00

I threw myself a Green Challenge today. I find green to be a difficult colour to work with, so now and then I pick a scene that is at least half green and see what I can do with it. One thing that made me feel more comfortable with the scene, was that a lot of the greens had a blueish tint to them (blue's my favourite colour!)

Today's painting was inspired by some photos my parents took on a trip to England. There was a photo I particularly liked, but I had to crop the scene a fair bit, remove or move some trees that I thought unbalanced the scene, and stuff like that. The result was... "A Horse By An English Cottage".

I think this is one of the busiest scenes I've painted, with a wide range of colours and shapes. I like it a lot, but I'm still trying to decide if I should make a couple minor changes to a few areas. A DVD I watched yesterday said that a lot of artists paint their picture, then let it sit for a week or two, and look at it again with a fresh eye to see where any last changes might be needed, so I'll probably do that, and see what I think in a week or two. Overall though, I'm pleased with it, and it's an improvement on some of my older attempts at painting buildings.

Here's a photo of the painting: (I put an imaginary 'frame and matting' around it in one of my graphics programs)

"A Horse by an English Cottage"
(C) 2008 Paul J. Turner
Soft Pastel on Sand Coloured Paper

Beach Somewhere

2008-04-10T16:14:00.004+10:00

"Beach Somewhere"

Dry Pastel on Medium-Grey Paper

(To be renamed once I know where it was)

Aha! I found three sheets of that nice medium-grey textured paper that I enjoy painting on in the back of an art folder.

So, I came across a pastel seascape artist's website today, and was astounded by just how great their paintings were, and it inspired me to paint another seascape (I'll only get better if I keep on painting!). The nice paper made a big difference, and I stuck to using soft pastels (sometimes I use a few hard pastels to do an undercoat) and tried to maintain a feeling of 'lightness' in the colours. I've found many of my paintings look much darker in real life than the photos I take of them, unless I turn on all the lights, so I guess the photos on this blog show what a painting would look like in a well lit room.

The camera was on a slight angle when the photo was taken, so the background coast seems to lean rather sharply down to the left, but it's a bit straighter on the real thing.

I think seascape paintings are my favourite for two reasons: I love the colour blue, and also my seascapes don't turn out too badly. A lot of other scenes and themes seem more challenging and difficult to me, and I'm not always pleased with how they turn out, but whenever I do a seascape scene, I enjoy it, and I think it encourages me to keep painting.

This painting is inspired by a beach photo my parents took on a trip, somewhere along the Australian coast. They aren't here at the moment, so I wasn't able to ask them where they were when they took the photo, so for the moment, this painting is entitled "Beach Somewhere", though I'll give it a proper name once I know where the beach was.

Now I'll go look at some more photos, and see if I find another that cries "paint me!"

Hi everyone! 2008 News

2008-04-10T09:23:00.007+10:00

Well, it's been nine months and I haven't posted anything on here!!! I logged on the other day to watch one of the movies of my paintings on this blog, and it wouldn't play. It said 'sorry, this video is no longer available' or something like that. I don't know what that was about, but it looks like some of the YouTube videos that showed some of my paintings being created won't play anymore... Maybe YouTube movies only work for a certain length of time, or maybe I needed to have people rate and vote for the movies to keep them up, I don't know, but it was free hosting, so it was good while it was working. Anyway, a couple of them still work, so if you haven't looked at them, have a look. I took photos as I painted, then blended them together to form a mini-movie where the painting slowly fades into existance one pastel layer at a time.

I've been doing a lot of reading, writing and programming lately, and not a whole lot of painting, but in the next couple weeks I'll be buying a bunch of new pastels and papers, and getting back into things. I've also ordered two DVD's on pastel painting that I read about on the Net, so I hope to learn some new tips and stuff from those movies. This year I'll be painting more seascapes and landscapes. I'll probably throw myself at trees again (I find painting scenes full of trees to be very difficult for me!). Anyway, come back in a couple weeks, and I hope there'll be some new pastel paintings for you to look at!

(Also, anyone new to my blog, remember that at the bottom of the page should be an "older posts" link that shows the rest of the blog, or you can click on the dates that should be listed top-left of the page I think, to view older entries and see what paintings I was doing last year.)

Pastel Mouse Art

2007-07-18T12:19:00.000+10:00

"River Murray 1"
Dry Pastel Mouse Art on Digital Paper
(c)2007 Paul J. Turner

Mouse Art: Zooming in to show 1:1 scale detail

What is Mouse Art?

I don't know if that's a real term for it or not, but basically, I make a canvas size 'piece of white paper' on the computer screen. It's bigger than the monitor, so I have to scroll about as I paint. To paint, I use the 'pastel paint tool'. When I select a color in my drawing package, I click the mouse on the paper. Instead of just a single pixel colouring in, it draws a splotch of colour on the screen where I click. By moving the mouse in strokes, and pressing the mouse button, it draws short splotchy lines on the digital 'page of paper' on the screen. So, it's just like drawing freehand, but you have to move the mouse to move the 'pastel stick' on the paper, and click the mouse to 'press it against the paper'.

It's quite difficult, compared to actually holding a physical pastel and painting on physical paper, and you have to picture how it would look as a whole inside your head, as you can't always see the whole picture all at once on your screen (it's bigger than the screen). Of course, you can zoom out to take a look at how it's going, then zoom back in to paint some more. It was a real challenge, but it was lots of fun to do, and I really like the finished product.

I'm not sure how digital art stands in the art world. It's probably frowned upon. People tend to think that doing something on the computer means that the computer does all the work for you, so it's not real skill, or real art. However, whether physical or on the screen, I have to pick the colour to use, I have to apply it to the paper, I have to keep everything in scale, I have to know how colours will blend if I paint one on top of another, I basically have to do everything I would have to do in a real painting, just on a screen instead of on a sheet of paper. It even took the same amount of time to paint. So, is paining digitally on a screen any less valid a form of art than painting on canvas or paper?

Anyway, I had a lot of fun doing this today. It's not the best painting that I've done, but I do like how it turned out, and it's my first real attempt at painting a pastel artwork freehand using a mouse, and 'digital paper' on the screen. I think I'll do some more sometime, and see if they improve. It's also great practice, for when I don't have materials, easel and paper set up to paint physically.

I've published my first book!

2007-07-07T21:00:00.000+10:00

Hi everyone :)
I know I haven't posted more art on here, like I said I would :(
However, I've been focusing on my writing a lot lately. While this is an art blog, I just had to mention, I've published my first book! It's so exciting seeing my name in print, on a printed and bound book!
My first book is an interactive novel, (like a "choose your own adventure" book) where on each page, you are told part of the story, and then given options as to what you want the characters to do next. Making different choices can affect the outcome of the story.

For more information, you can visit my official website, at: www.pjtgamebooks.com
Or even visit my online shop front at: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=834575

Oh yeah, and at some point, I'll probably put some more paintings on here, but I'm doing so much writing at the moment, it could be awhile before I get more painting done...

No More Painting A Day

2007-06-05T15:54:00.000+10:00

Well, I've slowed down a bit. No painting today. I guess I'm no longer on a painting-a-day phase. I still plan on doing a couple paintings each week, but I might only update my blog once a week, and put any new paintings into a single entry. Anyhow, check back now and then to find out what I'm up to :)

Paul Paints: Mud and Reeds along the Murray

2007-06-04T12:55:00.000+10:00

"Mud and Reeds along the Murray" (Preliminary Painting)
Dry Pastel on Smooth White Cardboard
(c) 2007 Paul J. Turner

Yes, I know, I said I would get better paper to work on. I bought some of the medium grey paper that the first two paintings in this blog were painted on (Victorian Coastline and 12 Apostles in my first blog entry) because I liked how the pastel blended well on it, and I think those two paintings turned out great.

However, while I have some of that grey paper, I thought I would try painting on some white acid-free cardboard I bought, thinking perhaps the whiteness would add some brightness to my painting. I should have used the grey paper again.

Blending was almost impossible on this cardboard, as a result, the sky which should be a smooth gradient, can be seen to be roughly textured instead - because the colours wouldn't mix together into a smooth finish. This also meant that the clouds became blobs of white, instead of smoothing out into whispy clouds, because the pastel pigment wouldn't blend into the sky, no matter how hard I pressed with my fingers.

I am happy, though, with the green silhouette of the lone tree on the left, and I think I captured the reddy/gold dryness of the area, in the dry-baked mud and the reeds. So, I like the colours, I just should stick to paper that I know holds the pastel pigment nicely, so that the actual detail and smoothness of the painting (especially the clouds) works better.

When selecting paper to paint on, I find that paper that is too smooth won't hold many layers of colour, but will blend nicely, while paper that is too rough will hold lots of colours, but it is hard to mix the colours together smoothly, and the paper tends to show through in the grain. Hopefully when I use the medium grey stuff I was originally using, my paintings will come out better again, as I've liked all the paintings I've created on the medium grey paper.

My parents just had a look, and they agree with me that this one's come out very sketchy (I'll point out again that the real thing never looks the same as a digital photo of it. Colours and tones vary.). However, they really liked the composition and the colours, and I've decided to paint it again, tomorrow, using a different paper surface to paint on, and see if I can get the scene looking better. I'll consider today's painting a 'practice run', and I'll certainly spend more time tomorrow trying to get good looking clouds, and hopefully on the medium grey paper, the clouds will smooth and blend better.

Paul Talks: Short Break

2007-06-03T10:08:00.000+10:00

Hi guys! I've had a few days break from painting - a painting a day can wear you out :)
However, I'll be starting another series of paintings tomorrow! (That's Monday for Aussies, but I think US is a day behind, or something?)

Paul Paints: Skodi the Dog, and old artworks

2007-05-30T13:42:00.000+10:00

Skodi the Dog
This is the smallest painting I think I've tried, about the size of the kookaburra painting I did a number of days ago, perhaps smaller. I find that photos don't quite match the colours of the real thing. This bitmap seems a bit flourescent/glowy or something, whereas in the painting, the colours seem to blend together much better. I think the digital camera I'm using might adjust lighting when it takes pictures, to 'enhance' the image or something. It also brightens things up a fair bit (the black paint in the picture seems a bit grey on my monitor, instead of being black).

Anyhow, I like it, and it's my first painting of a dog. Skodi belongs to my brother, and I saw a photo of him with dappled light across the grass, and thought it looked artistic.

This is also an experiment in coloured paper, as I painted this on dark green paper, so that to paint the grass, all I did was paint highlights and shadows onto the green paper, and let it blend together to form grass. (The lighting in the actual painting looks pretty good if you stand back and look at it)

Old Artwork

I thought I would display some of my artworks from the last time I had an art phase, which was probably almost ten years ago now. These are my early attempts at painting with pastels.

The Woodturner

This was a man who was at Sovereign Hill, Ballarat. He was carving something on a wood lathe, or whatever it is called. I think this was my first attempt at painting a person.

The Shed

This was my first landscape painting, I think. (It's hard to remember back that far) A friend of mine was taking some artwork to Asia, to add to the art collection of a man over there (I think it might have been in China) and he bought this painting off of me for the man's collection. I hope the collector doesn't mind my sharing a photo of the painting in my blog.

Baileys and Cheese
This was my first still life. I grabbed two red bath towels, to sit it on, and drape behind the objects, to try and get folds of cloth for a nice backdrop effect.

Lochard Gorge
This was my first ocean scene, in the same area as the Twelve Apostles rock formations, along the Victorian coastline (Australia). I always wished I had used a different blue for the sky gradient, because (especially when you look at the real thing, rather than a photo) the blue I used clashes with all the other blues and colours in the painting, and looks out of place.

The Boys
Myself, my brother, and a friend of the family, as boys, standing on the beach at the Twelve Apostles, along the Victorian coast. This was the first time I experimented with using coloured paper, and letting the paper show through. All of the grey in the water is actually raw paper with no paint on it. My mother bought this painting off of me, so that I would never sell it.

Paul Talks: Painting Care

2007-05-28T09:41:00.000+10:00

Hi guys! Sorry, no painting today - I'm waiting to get some art supplies later in the week, probably wednesday or thursday. However, I want to try and post something every day, so let's think...

Pastel Painting Care
Let's talk about pastel painting care. Pastel paintings should always be framed with glass, and not left to open air, as the painting is simply paint pigment dust pressed into the paper. Care should be taken moving them about, because if you bump the painting, pastel dust will come off of it.

If you have framed the picture, and hold it verticle, and knock it, pastel dust will probably drift down across the surface of the painting. This usually means things like, having white dust (from the clouds in a landscape) dotted across the rest of the painting.

The best thing to do is to hold the painting so it's leaning backwards, with the picture facing upwards, as this helps prevent dusting from taking place.

Dust Traps
I recently learned of 'dust traps'. Most paintings with carboard matting around them have a bevelled inside edge. On a pastel painting, it can be good to have two layers of matting, with a hidden inner layer of matting, that has a reversed bevel facing the painting. This way, if pastel dust falls off the surface of the painting, it falls into this gap behind the exterior matting, and doesn't show when you're looking at the painting. Not all framer's put dust traps into pastel paintings. None of the paintings of mine that have been framed had them put in, but I found with careful handling of the paintings, I didn't get colour drifting down across the painting, or colour staining the bevelled edge of the matting.

Some of my paintings have been hanging for about ten years now, and have not had stained matting board, so I think it might only be necessary if the painting will be transported a lot, such as being couriered to an exhibition in another state.

Sunlight
As with many paintings, it is important for the painting surface not to have direct, hot sunlight shining across it for long periods of time. The paper can warp, but also, the pocket or air between the painting and the glass can cause condensation. This can stain the glass with pigment, cause water droplets to run down the painting - streaking it with colour - and all sorts of unpleasantness. I believe other paintings should also be out of direct hot sunlight, as it lessens their life time or something. (However, I don't really know anything about oils, or acryclics, or watercolours)

Transportation
When transporting a framed painting in your car, the best thing to do is to lie the painting down in the back of the car, so the picture is facing upwards. That way if the car bumps around, the pastel dust won't be stirred up too much. Of course, you want to pack soft materials around the frame, so that it isn't free to move about when the car turns corners. Another hint: avoid speed bumps, or drive very slowly over them.

Don't place heavy objects on top of the glass to try and hold the painting down - you might press the glass against the pastel dust, or worse, crack the glass!

If you can't lie it down, have the person in the passenger seat carry the painting on their lap, with the seat pushed back so they have as much leg room as possible, and the painting lowered so that it is as flat as possible (picture face-up). Rest the top edge of the frame softly on the dashboard, but take care not to bump it on the dashboard as the car drives about. I've done this a few times, and managed to transport the painting without it getting damaged. However, hit a big bump, and the frame might smash against the dashboard, shaking pastel dust, or cracking the frame if it was a hard enough bump. This hasn't happened to me, but I just thought I'd say again that lying it down flat, with soft objects packed around it's sides to stop it moving about, is still the best (cheap) way to transport it in your car.

It's a pity pastel paintings aren't like oil or acrylic, and you can't just roll them up.

Well, I guess that's all for today!

Paul Paints: Cloud Study 1

2007-05-27T16:10:00.000+10:00

Only time for a quick sketch today. I wanted to practice painting clouds, so I've done a cloudy scene above a beach as it grows dark. I tried to throw in three people sihouettes for fun, but I think I should have left them out.
Again, I found the paper I'm using was giving me difficulties, mostly where blending pastels together, and into the paper, was concerned. This left areas such as the watery sand looking rough and sketchier than I had planned. I'm going to an art store, probably on wednesday, to pick up some better papers to work with.

"Cloud Study 1"
40 x 23 cm
Dry Pastel Sketch on Medium Grey Paper
(c)2007 Paul J. Turner

Paul Paints Coast and plays guitar

2007-05-26T16:37:00.000+10:00

Okay, so I thought I'd try doing more coastal scenes today. The first painting I did today was a dismal failure (and thus not shown on this blog). The clouds in it, though, were possibly the best clouds I've painted. It's a pity the rest of the painting didn't work out at all.

I'm working on a different type of paper to usual, it's called 'pastel paper' but I find the colours don't stick to it as well, blending is much more difficult and not so smooth, and I can't put as many layers of colour onto the paintings as I'd like to. It gets to a point where you press the pastel against the paper, but no colour comes off.

Anyway, I'm doing some research on what types of paper to use for painting on. So, after that painting, I had some lunch, and thought, well, I want to paint something I'm pleased with, today. So, I tried again, but with a different scene. I chose the Twelve Apostles rock formation again, because my best paintings have all been of the Twelve Apostles (though, I admit, most of the paintings I've thrown out because they didn't work out, were also of the Twelve Apostles, lol).

In this one, I kept fiddling around with the clouds, and while they aren't bad, they're not the best I've done. The rocks and cliffs didn't take form as well as I would have liked, colours not blending and building up as well as I wanted, which I'm conveniently blaming on the surface of the paper I've used today.

However, I think I'm pleased with how the foreground water and waves turned out. I probably could have mixed the foreground water and the distant water a bit more, so there wasn't such as sudden difference between the two water regions on the painting, but it's not bad.

It's also the first Twelve Apostles painting I've followed using photos, which I'm finding is a great way to be able to look at the painting take form, and see where I make mistakes, and where I create nice effects. So, the series of photos with these paintings should make good learning material for me, so I can work out what goes wrong before I paint, and work out what looks good, and do that again.

I also decided to throw some music in the background of this one. I didn't have any set music to play, I just cycled waves on my multi-track recording machine, then free-formed on the guitar over the top of it. Hence the two low notes that are completely out of place in one section, though you might not notice the two wrong sounding notes unless you were paying attention :)

The failed scene (not shown here) that didn't work out was from a photo, and it's a good composition, so I think I'll try painting it again one day, once I get nicer paper, and practice painting the areas on it that didn't work out.

"Twelve Apostles 6"
Dry Pastel on Medium Grey Paper
(c)2007 Paul J. Turner

Paul Paints: A Kookaburra

2007-05-25T14:27:00.000+10:00

Well, Mum keeps asking me to paint her a kookaburra. After all, my live-in art studio is called 'Kookaburra Cottage'. Well, I've never painted an animal before, so I put off doing it. Today I decided, well, I only want to do a small painting today, so I'd try painting a bird. I think I'm pleased with how this one turned out, though I need to practice some more trying to get blurry green backgrounds looking like a camera being focused on the foreground.

There's a number of kookaburra families that our neighbour sometimes feeds, and sometimes they pay us a visit too. They like to look into the house, on a wooden beam outside the windows, or just perch on a tree stump or branch, surveying the yard.

I think next time I attempt a bird, I might try a rosella (parrot) as we also see lots of them around where we live.

"Kookaburra"
Dry Pastel on Medium Grey Paper
(c) 2007 Paul J. Turner

Here's a photo showing my current pastel collection. The pastels at the top and top right are hard pastels, which are often used for underpainting. The pastels in the big wooden box, bottom left, and in the box, bottom right, are soft pastels. They blend really nicely, and are used for the rest of the painting, and to put the final light and dark strokes onto the page. The big wooden box, bottom left, is Australian Art Spectrum, and they're my current favourite when painting.

Paul Paints: Rock at Wilson's Prom

2007-05-24T17:56:00.000+10:00

Back to the beaches! I love painting ocean/coastal scenes, but I promised I would spend more time creating paintings that had foliage in them, since I find greenery to be my major stumbling block. So, I picked a scene with sand and coastal rocks, but backed by a mass of foliage.

This big rock juts out above Tidal Creek, which flows near the camp grounds, past sandy beach, leading to the ocean. It's located at Wilson's Promentary, at the south-east tip of Victoria, in Australia. I have fond memories of numerous camping trips there. It used to be tents and caravans, but they've modernised it a bit, introducing cabins for those who don't want to rough it.

I remember walking back to our group Kitchen Tent, with an open doorflap, and a big, furry wombat paying the tent a visit!

In this painting, I decided to try a new technique I read about in an art magazine. Instead of bledning all the colours into each other as I applied new layers to the painting, I fixed each layer of colour with a coating of fixative. This locks the colours into the page, as a new surface to paint the next layer on, instead of causing the new colours to mix up with the previous layer. I think this has led to quite vibrant colours.

I left the sand at the bottom of the painting rather bland, and smoothed/faded the foliage above the rocks, so that the strongest colours, lights and darks, where around the rocks - thus drawing the eye to the rock formation as a focal point.

"Rock at Wilson's Prom"
Dry Pastel on Medium Grey Paper
(c) 2007 Paul J. Turner

Paul Paints: Boats at Low Tide

2007-05-23T14:43:00.000+10:00

Today's painting was a quick one, on a smaller sheet of pastel paper than I usually use. I wanted to experiment with different lighting and colour tones, and looked back to the ocean for a scene with two small boats on wet sand, with water pooled around them, during low tide.

Again, I had a lot of fun creating a movie that shows the painting take form. This movie's longer than the last one, and I threw in some sound of waves and seagulls for added atmosphere :)

I tried something new with this experiment. The shadows were dark, and the atmosphere gloomy, so I looked at every dark/shadow region and drew it with a black pastel, then sprayed it with fixative, to create a solid black and grey scene. I then painted all the colours of the painting on top of it.

I found that when I tried to create a sense of distance, by gradually lightening and whiting out the distant sand behind the boats, so it 'fades away' toward the top of the paper, because I used the black pastel in the top half of the painting in the initial shadowing phase, I could not lighten that region up properly. The result is that I had to keep tinkering with the top half of the sand in the scene, trying to get a look I liked, and ended up having to simply work with the dark patches in the sand. Next time, if I try this initial shadowing approach, I'll only use thick black pastel for the middle and foreground, and use a grey for distant terrain, so that it will fade away better during the later stages of the painting.

"Boats at Low Tide"
Dry Pastel on Grey Paper
(c)2007 Paul J. Turner

Painting a landscape step by step

2007-05-22T15:15:00.000+10:00

Okay, it's day 2 of my art blog. I mentioned before that I feel uncertain about painting trees. I've never been all that happy with my foliage painting skills, so I've decided that practice makes perfect, and picked a painting to do with lots of greenery in it. Just for fun, I'm chronicling the painting of this scene, with 12 photographs I took along the way.

For this painting, I am working from a photo my parents took whilst on a holiday. The scene is some dry grass, with trees, and a distant mountain, from Warumbungle National Park in NSW, Australia.

step 1

I begin each painting by taking a black pastel pencil, and outlining all the key shapes and contours of the landscape. This helps me get everything in the correct perspective, and not to lose track of where objects are later on.

step 2

I prefer to paint on grey paper. That way, most of the scene has an average tone to it, and if I want things in shadow or in light, I simply lay down a region of white or black pastel, and rub it into that part of the paper. Then when I paint objects in those areas, they are brighter or darker than the surrounding terrain because of the undercoating. In this step, I whitened the sky region, and slightly whitened some of the lower terrain where sun is shining on the dry grass.

step 3

Now I'm working on the sky. I like to work from the top of the painting, to the bottom, finishing off areas as I go, and to paint the background first, and work my way forwards into the foreground of the scene. One reason for this is that pastel dust falls down, so if I painted the sky last, there'd be white dust falling over the bottom of the scene. Another reason is that I find it easier to paint trees in front of the sky, than to paint the sky through the trees.

step 4

At this stage, I am finishing off the cloud formations, and working to get the sky looking right. The sky at the top of the painting should become darker, and the sky further into the painting should become lighter. This is because the sky at the top is closer to the viewer.

Step 5

Now it's time to work on the distant terrain. There's a mountain in the very distance, then some green hills and rocks jutting up, a bit closer. Shadowing for distant objects has an undercoat of dark blue instead of black, to give it a faded, distant appearance. It is important to save strong shadows for the foreground of the image, to give objects more of a crispness the closer they are to the viewer.

Step 6

Now I'm laying down a darker undercoat for the middle-ground trees. I'm still not using black for the shadowed region, I'm now using a very dark grey. I only used blue for the really distant terrain, because the dark blue ties in with the blue of the sky. Now I'm using dark grey as an undercoat to pull those trees away from the sky. (If you get what I mean?)

Step 7

Now it's time to get into some detail. I rub black into areas to suggest the shadowed parts of distant trees, a dark, muddy green into the main foliage, and a lighter, oliveish green into highlighting the trees. I leave the paper blank where a dead tree juts up closer in the foreground. I'll paint that later. I also work on a small lake and dry grass in front of the distant trees. I found that rather than thinking of trees as seperate objects I need to try and paint, instead I looked for patterns of shadow and patterns of light, and blocked those shapes in. The result was the impression of trees beginning to take form.

Step 8

Now I've moved forward, blocking in a sun dappled region of dry grass in the middle-ground, marking black undercoat-shadowing of the trees and foliage on the left, and working more black and highlights on the right. In the foreground, I have began undercoating the dry grass with a dark brown. I have not marked branches or anything yet, I just focused on where masses of leaves where hanging out on the left.

Step 9

Now I've worked on laying out where the rocks and dead logs on the dry grass would go, marking their shadowed surfaces in black pastel. I also worked on the two dead trees on the right, one larger one in the foreground, and a small one a little to it's left, in the middle-ground.

Step 10

Grass is a lot of fun to paint, and takes me a while to get right. Basically, lots of little strokes, on slight upward angles. I begin with lots of dark brown strokes all over the grass area, then lay middle-brown colours on lighter areas, then light golden brown/yellow where the sunlight hits the grass. I also begin adding middle-toned grey to the rocks, to start highlighting their surface.

Step 11

I tend to blur/blend everything with my finger, just lightly, with each layer of colour. The only coat of colour that might not be blending is always the very last coat of colour. This way, the mixing of strokes and shades of colour creates an interesting and varied surface. I also use the tip of a rectangular black pastel to mark the branches on the trees on the left, and block in shadowy areas on the foliage. With the branches, since they are thin, I can't use my finger to blend the colour into the paper, or I'll end up with big finer-sized smudges everywhere instead. However, on another website yesterday, I learned a handy blending tip: using the ends of cotton buds, pressed just slightly against the paper, to blend lines of colour into the paper without making big smudges. It worked pretty well!

Step 12

Lastly, I'm finishing off the foreground areas. More white on stones where it is needed, to highlight them, a few more strokes of colour in some parts of the grass, a little more finger blending (but just lightly), and more shadowing, highlighting folliage shapes on the left.

Finished Painting

Well, this is probably the first painting I've ever done that had a large percentage of trees and foliage in it, and it is the first I've done that I actually liked. It's not a masterpiece, but I think it's the best non-ocean landscape I've done to date. I particularly like how the rocky mountain in the very distance has turned out, and I like the grass effect I have in the foreground. Most of all, for the first time, I'm not embarrased by the trees and foliage in this one. I think the only thing to do next time, is that the green of the distant-middle hills on the left, rising above the trees, is too far removed from the green of the trees in the painting, and thus, is too set apart from the foreground. Perhaps if I greyed the middle-ground a bit more next time, to place it further from the foreground of the scene, or used a different, muddier green for the hills.

Well, that's my painting for today. I hope you enjoyed getting an idea of how I create my artworks, using dry pastels.

Paul Paints with Pastels

2007-05-21T17:59:00.000+10:00

Hi. Well, let me tell a little bit about myself. I'm an Australian living in Victoria, in the Dandenong Ranges. I have all sorts of hobbies, from writing and music, to computer graphics and programming, to art.

Well, I've started on another art phase. It's been a few years since I actively painted, but after a recent visit to an exhibition at my local art gallery, the Sherbrook Art Society (located near Belgrave's Main Street) I was inspired. I began looking through my art magazines, browsing art sites on the net, and growing rather enthusiastic about the whole art scene.

That was Thursday. On Friday, I went shopping for paper, and found my boxes of dry pastels (hard and soft) and pastel pencils. Now I'm in a painting or more a day phase, and I'd like to share my artwork, as well as my thoughts and observations of painting with pastels. I'm hoping to join some art societies, hang paintings on gallery walls, enter competitions, and generally throw myself back into the world of Art.

Being a perfectionist, and knowing I can't achieve my artistic visions at my present level of painting skill, I find myself looking at each painting, and wishing I'd done this, or done that, or could change an area of it, or make something look better. That used to depress me, and leave me unsatisfied when painting. Now I'm looking at it another way, and trying to use the good points of each painting as encouragement, and the areas I want to do better as lessons to learn from.

So, I'll start off this blog with the paintings I've done over the last three days. I decided to begin with topics I am passionate about, and have painted successfully in the past. To friends and family, they would know that I tend to paint coastal seascapes - in particular, painting after painting of the 12 Apostles, a rock formation along the Victorian coastline. My parents keep telling me to try painting something new, but to get my confidence up I've chosen two scenes I knew I would really enjoy painting.

Saturday's painting is a scene of the cliffs near the 12 Apostles. I call it "Victorian Coastline 4". (Obviously, because it's the fourth painting I've done of the Victorian Coastline.)

On Sunday, full of confidence, and inspired by the 12 Apostles formation itself, I tried a more complex scene. I called this, "Twelve Apostles 5" as it is the 5th painting of the rock formations I've done.

Well, after that, I thought I would try some different types of scenes. If I'm going to get further with my art, I'd like to be able to paint more than just oceans and cliffs. As you can see from the next two paintings, both done today (Monday), they don't quite have the same visual appeal as the first two paintings.

My parents recently went on a trip to Europe, and brought back some great photos, and one was of some boats at the town of Mousehole. I've never painted a scene with buildings in it before, so I knew this would strain me. It did. I painted layer on layer, trying to get the colours, tones and shapes to please me. In the end, I decided I wasn't getting any further with this painted, and decided it was complete.

I was pleased with the boat in the foreground, the clouds were all right, but I think this painting has a rather drawn/illustrative feel about it, a flatness rather than a sense of depth.

After labouring on that, I thought, well, while I was already trying to paint new types of scenes, I'd try something I knew would be a real struggle. One thing I've never been able to happily achieve is greenery of any kind. Foliage drives me around the bend! So, I thought I'd try a scene a friend photographed in New Zealand, of a waterfall, and some rocks sticking out of the water, with various foliage in the background. I was right, it drove me nuts working and reworking the colouring of the painting, trying to get something I was pleased with.

However, with water being my favourite subject matter, I think I'm pleased with how the foreground water and rocks, with their reflections, turned out. I'm still unsure as to whether the waterfall is recognisable as a waterfall, or what people might think it is. Perhaps a tall section of shiny rock? If I go to paint another waterfall, I think I'll practice ways of showing the impression of running water, first.

Both this painting, and the one of the boats, have a sense of perspective in them, but I feel the tone choices I made do not give it a good feeling of depth, rather the paintings have a flat quality about them. I really felt that the two coastal scenes had a strong sense of depth, of looking 'into' the paintings, which I believe is created by strong contrast, and a better 'viewing angle'.

One thing I've certainly noticed in my recent paintings, that is an improvement over past work, is that I am focusing strongly on creating a feeling of 'light' in the paintings. I believe creating the right colours and tones for realistic lighting to be the most important element. Even a bad painting can look great when you stand right back on the other side of the room and look at it, if the lighting in the painting is right.

Well, I hope you enjoyed your first look at some of my latest artworks. In the days to come, I'll probably talk more about the actual painting process, techniques I use to do things, links to websites I've found helpful, and maybe try a look at how I paint a picture, with numerous shots of the painting in progress from start to finish. (For those interested)