paintings prints and stuff

Sketch in acrylic ink, tinted graphite and a touch of coloured pencil I currently have all my classes looking at trees at the moment - considering the individuality of them, looking at various artists past and contemporary.  Contemporary includes some friends and also artists I don't know but admire , these include Bridget Hunter. Glen Heath, David Parfitt, David Prentice, David Tress, Kurt Jackson, Shirley Trevena, Cheryl Culver and lots more. I don't have time to add links, sorry,  but google them if you are interested?  Past includes Mondrian, Klimt, Van Gogh, Monet etc etc etc  I really like Mondrian's trees and Klimt too. There was a page in a sketchbook where I had experimented with tinted graphite, doing a moody image of rain approaching across the bay.  It was just a tester and was quite boring.  I decided to work over it, keeping it as background and working in grey and white acrylic ink (plus a little more tinted graphite and a touch of coloured pencil).  

Evening Light, Winsor and Newton Gouache and Derwent Artbars in the A4 Stillman and Birn Alpha sketchbook. Further experimenting with gouache, Derwent Artbars and Stillman and Birn sketchbooks. This was a demo to students about the benefits of working on a dark background when painting moody scenes.   I scribbled various deep colours with the Artbars and then washed them into a streaky deep background.   Then with gouache I worked over it - thin glazes and thicker paint - then worked back in with the Artbars in places.  Leaving parts of that dark background as tree trunk, far trees, some of the field, scratching through to the darkness below for fine lines and marks.  The pale flowers in the foreground were done with white gouache, flicked from a bristle brush to keep the marks random and free.  The combination of media worked well with lots of  variation in marks possible.

I've made a start on two of the 40inch square canvasses. One is going to be an evening/nightfall view of the beach with the moon rising and the last light catching the pools left by the ebbing tide. One of a series of works I've done about the beach at this time - just before and just after sunset. There are more subtle colour changes and more shine on the sea than the photo shows. It has a way to go yet - this is the beginning, establishing lights and darks and the form of the pools. I sketched it in roughly in Prussian blue acrylic and then worked on with oils. Some of the acrylic will show in the finished piece. Next I decided to work on another of the 40 inch canvasses, loosely using the sketch I'd done in charcoal. I used the prussian blue again just to establish where things were, the form of the rocks and the lie of the land with the way the tree grew out of it with some of the tones roughly put in. This has a long way to go and a lot of decisions to be made. Part