Photos from the weekend exhibition at Ogishi Glass

Our exhibition was in the front building - 3 artists - me , Julie Lau + Karen Malmgren. I demonstrated on the front verandah.
Below left to right
 Julie Lau , Me ( Sue Linton) + Karen Malmgren _ maybe not the most flattering pic of us but the one where we all looked a little happy - that's where a painting is better than a photo! You can pick the best photo of everyone and put them together for the ideal portrait .lol's
 

 Julie with one of her paintings

 Karen with some of her's

 Your's truly acting the goat as usual..lol's

I'll be demonstrating at Ogishi Glass today so come and say hello!

My realistic recreation of the painting of Caractacus English Derby Winner 1862

  Malcolm & Jenny came up from Sydney to see the portrait I'd created from their 1860's photo of the painting of English Derby winner Caractacus. 
One of their relatives was the trainer of the horse.They used to have a print of the painting but sold it years ago. Recently they saw that the original painting had sold in England on the antique show ' Flog it" for c 3100 english pounds. They decided they'd like a copy back in the family and sought me out to recreate a more lifelike version of the original. The original painting was done by an anonymous artist and was in a quite a stylised and naive style.The reference photo was taken from a video still from the TV show so it wasn't that clear.

 Above - the original painting by an anonymous 1800's artist

Above -  My recreation
Caractacus
60 x 84 cms
Framed size Oil

 Malcolm with the portrait

 The finished portrait with my suggested frame . I will frame the portrait in the next week or so.

 I found it an interesting and challenging task. I made the horse more realistic but kept the people similar to the ones in the painting but a bit more in proportion and real.
Malcolm and Jenny were very pleased with the result.
'I can't take my eyes off the painting '
Jennifer

'It fits the bill and looks very period'
Malcolm

I was to have Caractacus in an 1800's English rural setting - so no bright sunny skies like over here! 
 Here is the painting hung .
  

 The photo above is more typical of the colour of the portrait but this one shows the frame better.

Exhibition and demonstrations this weekend 19-20th Oct

I'm painting an old Staffy cross blue cattle dog in pastel. It's the first Pastel I've done in months and at first I found it quite frustrating.
Pastel is an artist quality chalk - much richer colours and softer than school chalk and it lasts for 100's of years. He is a greying black dog.
If I'm creating a portrait of a black dog in Oil I can mix any colour I want. I can liven the painting up by using very dark purples , blues, greens etc for the darks .The overall effect will still be a black dog but much more interesting and alive than if I used black.
The problem with pastels is you have limited mixing - you pick the closest colour and put it on. You can layer a bit but for dark colours you are limited to the manufacturers offerings and they don't make many really gusty darks..
I finally worked out a way to get around this and I'm enjoying adding heaps of different colours.
When you layer thick layers of pastel it can come up like a painting , lighter sketchy application is more a drawing.I am using both techniques now.
You can only layer so much pastel onto the paper. The paper has a 'tooth' /surface that the pastel particles sit into so they stay on the paper. After a certain number of layers the tooth fills in and then you can't put any more on as the pastel skids over the surface.You have to plan the painting so you can get the effects you are after before the paper fills up so you can't finish it!
To show you the effects you can get here's an earlier Pastel I did of  Jack. He wasn't such a problem as he didn't have a lot of black on him.
 

Jack
20 x 30
framed pastel

Here's  a pastel of a black dog

And some Oils

I don't know that the photos really show the difference very well but Oils allow me to get 3D a bit better as I can mix subtle variations of colour that come forward or recede. You can see it in the actual portraits.

Sarah - Mondays 2.30hr practise portrait from a model

 

 Sarah
 30 x 40cms
 oil on canvas

I'm happy with the likeness and general look. If I were to finish it I would put some more highlights on the RHS of the face and generally brighten her up a little. You always run out of time in the session.