From the Aquarellista Headquarters 2
Although there is not as much time as I hoped for (because my artist bro Pim had to go to hospital and I'm taking over his classes for the rest of the month and April, lots of planning and general distraction) - I am slowly working on the portrait commission, and 'the thing' is already happening: I fall in love with my subject. I am thinking about him and his features all the time. By the way, this always happens to me! Boys, girls, old, young- as long as it has a heartbeat, I love it deeply during the making of the painting! It is probably what the term 'muse' is all about... Anyway - a remark on my work is sometimes that I show a much too 'loving' image - and the above is probably why! Can't help it! Maybe I should someday paint somebody that I don't like - as a test...
OK - here's a picture of the basic sketch:
very thin , with a HB pencil on the Arches torchon, so that the drawing will hardly be visible on the painting when it is finished.
And then the first wash of his face, without much detail and contrast - but definitely with a likeness to, euh... my muse!
Green Rosebud ‘covered’
Last summer I went to my favourite café in Valbonne village and there she was, this performer with just a guitar and a great voice... she was jamming a bit with a couple of local people and it was wonderful. Afterwards I went over to give a bit of super positive feedback and to ask if she had cd's.
Long story short, her name turned out to be Catherine Taylor Dawson, she is a professional singer from the UK, who at this moment mainly does session work and (to give you an idea of her voice) did TV adverts and re-mixes for the vocals of Katy Perry, Joss Stone and Bjork...
She is currently recording and producing her first solo album with all songs composed by herself - and guess who is going to design the cover! I am delighted that for the time being she has produced a jazzy album with covers of great songs for marketing reasons - and that she chose my 'Green Rose Bud' for the front as a try out...and by the way, the cooperation went very well!
To check out her photo and her music you can check out http://www.catherinetaylordawson.moonfruit.com/ or google her name... You can listen to her music via internet... It's definitely worthwhile!!
From the Aquarellista Headquarters 1
Today I started with a new portrait commission and as I am creating a 'Making of' book anyway I thought it would be a nice idea to use my writings to keep you posted on how it goes, the materials, the details, the challenges and things I learn on the way...
After sketching, studying, discussing and taking a lot of pictures (spread out over several days) I started with choosing my paper.
In this case (the protrait is head to feet and pretty big, hard to stretch on a board) I chose a sheet of heavy Arches paper, 640 grams rough grain Torchon, with those wonderful 'bords frangés' that only hand made paper has. And a beautiful watermark on all corners.
And then work on the perfect basic drawing - important because using transparent aquarelle watercolours makes it very hard to repair mistakes...
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