Life Drawing – more from Term 2

Posted on 22nd March 2012 by perfectly4med

That’s another block of life drawing finished! This term we’ve looked at the paintings and sculptures of Antony Gormley and used wax and ink to paint the human form. This is the second piece from Week 2 – I’ve already posted my work from Week 3 here. I’m particularly pleased with the crouching figure. Many thanks to our model for his fortitude!

This second image is the result of a four 40 minute sittings over two weeks, starting with a measured outline, then addition of oil pastels for colour using David Bomberg’s paintings as an influence. In the second session, we then broke down the oil pastel with turpentine before adding the background and working into the figure more. The figure isn’t dark enough with the addition of the background, so some of the form is lost as a result. Many thanks to our model for allowing me to share the image (and for sitting so patiently!).

Mixed Media Still Life #3

Posted on 16th March 2012 by perfectly4med

It’s Friday, and another mixed media lesson 🙂

This week we had to do a candle wax resist rendition of the still life – clear wax on whitish paper made the initial stages very tricky. However, as the dye wash revealed, I did fairly well! A bit of charcoal and a smidge of oil pastel here and there, and I was done.

Mixed Media Still Life #2

Posted on 9th March 2012 by perfectly4med

I’ve done another still life this week – this time using oil pastel resist technique. The objects were drawn in oil pastels first and then a dye colour wash applied for the fore and background. A bit of bleach, charcoal and chalk later and I got this:

Has it only been a year?

Posted on 7th March 2012 by perfectly4med

Hello! Today is the last day of the first year of my blog 🙂

And in my normal fashion, I’m celebrating this milestone with a giveaway! More on that in a moment, but first some first year stats:

I’ve had over 67,000 hits in one year – wow!
My busiest day was 22nd February this year when 783 views occurred in 24 hours
My Tangle Pattern gallery has been viewed 6,616 times
The top five most viewed tangle patterns are CB5, Raffia, Waterlily, Flower Whorl and ABC
1,245 views came from people searching Google for ‘tangle patterns’
The post with the most comments during the year, unsurprisingly, was my third giveaway
I have 130 email subscribers and 13 WordPress followers
I’ve made 227 posts and there are a total of 664 comments

Phew! What a year! I’d like to thank you all for your support, comments and enquiries – they really do make a difference to my enthusiasm levels!

And now to the giveaway. In fact, two giveaways!

Both giveaways will be a commissioned piece of artwork (that’s postable) of the recipient’s choosing – it might be a bespoke card, a zentangle, a drawing – that’s for the recipient to choose with me. It’ll be your own special personal bit of blog 🙂

The first giveaway is to the person that has given the most feedback through the comments over the year – and by far the leader is…. Judy Gudeman! Judy, please look in your email inbox! I’d like to give an honourable mention to Dianne T and Lizzie Mayne as runners up.

And the second is to my longest standing, active, email or WordPress follower. All you have to do to win the giveaway is to comment on this blog – whoever has been subscribing for the longest and responds the quickest will win 🙂

As for my new followers, keep following! It won’t be long before I am celebrating my 100,000th view and I’m hoping to get some great prizes to giveaway.

Best wishes to you all and roll on the next 12 months!

Life Drawing – Term 2 – Week 3

Posted on 6th March 2012 by perfectly4med

Here’s my life drawing from this week at college. We are experimenting with expressive strokes in black Quink ink washes, and this week added in rust colours using oil pastels. The black Quink is ideal for this as it is full of every blue and brown colour you could wish with a few grey tones chucked in as well! I used a blue, orange and brown for the rest of the colouring, blending as I went, over the top of the tonal ink washes.

Mixed media still life

Posted on 2nd March 2012 by perfectly4med

Here’s a pic of this mornings session at college working BIG – A1 portrait size mixed media still life. The colour wash used textile dyes, a bit of bleach and then charcoal and white chalk embellishments.

And here’s what we were drawing…

Foam Board Wave Machine

Posted on 1st February 2012 by perfectly4med

I’m doing a 3D module at college at the moment, and we have to design something with one moving part, to be made out of wood/acrylic. Of course I had ambitious ideas, and decided to mock up my proposal out of 5mm foam board to check that it worked. So here is my 3D, working, foam board wave machine, starring a kebab stick!

Wave machine - oblique view - position 2

Wave machine - oblique view - position 1

I’d love to post a video of it in action… but I haven’t quite got the right facilities to do that just yet 🙂

This took about 90 minutes to make, with no templating or pattern. The base is A5 size, the discs the diameter of a 10 pence piece secured with a bit of glue. It was really exciting to give the kebab stick it’s first turn and see the wave pattern go across!

Wow! Embossing Powder’s blog goes live!

Posted on 12th January 2012 by perfectly4med

As promised, more info on the Wow! Embossing Powder blog to which I am a contributor as part of the design team. At the moment it’s just an introduction to all of the design team, but I know there are projects galore waiting in the wings 🙂

The UK blog is at http://wowembossingpowder.blogspot.com

The US version (with a different design team) is at http://wowembossingpowders.blogspot.com… notice the difference?

Wow! A new role…

Posted on 9th January 2012 by perfectly4med

I’m pleased to announce that I have a new role as one of the design and demonstrator team for Wow Embossing Powders Ltd. I’ll be doing a project a week featuring their huge range of reduced static embossing powders and embossing glitters. I’ll be posting projects here with full instructions, but they will published first on their blog once it’s up and running. Watch out for the new posts and, as always, comments more than welcome 🙂

Wowweeee! Over 50,000 views!

Posted on 21st December 2011 by perfectly4med

Hi all – between you, you’ve clocked up 50,000 views of my blog in 9 months of it being live. Thank you so much for your support, comments and interest.

In commemoration of this fabulous achievement, I’m working on a great giveaway – but it’s happened a smidge quicker than I expected, so it’s not quite ready. Keep your eyes peeled early in the New Year.

Happy Christmas, and best wishes for the New Year.