Daffodil study

ink and watercolour wash on board
8x10inch
©2013 Lisa Le Quelenec

Some cheery blooms in anticipation of sunshine.....it has to be coming soon....... right?

Poppy party

The skies may be cooler than previous days this week but the poppies are hot, hot, hot in the garden! Large cheery blooms are bobbing in the breeze and today some more have opened - white this time. If only I had some blue Himalayan ones I could of had a jubilee red, white and blue.

Poppies I, II & III watercolour over acrylic ink drawing  12x12cm ©2012 Lisa Le Quelenec

Wishing you all a wonderful celebratory weekend....

At last!

Oriental poppy sketch   pencil, ink and watercolour on A3 cartridge paper ©2012 Lisa Le Quelenec

I've been (not very patiently) waiting for my oriental poppies to bloom in the garden. This morning I woke up to not one but two beautiful fiery blooms. In between framing and working on an unexpected commission I took a break to go out and sketch them.

It's been hard the last week to get much painting done as it has suddenly gotten so hot here in the UK. The twenty minutes or so that I was outside today was enough for me in the heat. As I was drawing the sky started to turn a delicious blue/grey that threatened rain but soon passed. I'm hoping for a thunderstorm they might possibly be coming tomorrow. This heat is making me consider a return to oils....

First daffodil sketch of the season

I keep a sketchbook that I add to every year just for daffodil studies. I started because I had an aversion to painting yellow - I used to either get muddy non yellows or they looked so 'out of the tube' unnatural. Daffodils are a favourite flower of mine and I look forward to seeing the first blooms appear at the end of winter/beginning of spring. I see them as a promise of the warmer months to come and they brighten the darker greyer days.

 These two sketches are where I left off last year in my daffodil sketchbook. More can be seen in my flickr album here .

Below is the first sketch of them for 2012, I am aiming to do some acrylic paintings this year.

First daffodil sketch of the season.
A4 acrylic on paper

Poppy pair

 

Poppy I
acrylic on paper 53x53cm
©Lisa Le Quelenec 2011



Poppy II
acrylic on paper 53x53cm

©Lisa Le Quelenec 2011

  

I've been having fun over the last week or so painting these. Whilst I've painted poppies before I haven't painted them on such a big scale. It's been good to loosen up a little with larger areas of more fluid paint. I wanted to keep the background minimal so the entire focus is centred on the fiery forms of the petals.

 

detail

 

detail





The seed heads were plotted in early on by scratching in to the first layer of paint with the end of the brush. This made linear ridges of paint that I could dry brush over to build up the form. I've purposely kept them in a softer focus with no detail to suggest depth. As subsequent layers of glaze were added this helped to push them back. I painted the centres in by first adding in the dark veins in the petals and then glazing the reds on top. The flower centres were the last thing to be added which whilst they might look detailed in the picture are really quite loosely painted.

A poppy sketchbook page

A3 sketchbook page - poppies
FW acrylic ink
©2011 Lisa Le Quelenec

The poppies have finished now but the above is a sketchbook page I did back in May when they were in all their glory. I think with a bit of tweaking I could make three paintings out of this page, it would be a lovely change from all the blue I paint. Acrylic ink is nice to play with too, such intense colours when used neat and almost like watercolour when diluted. So many paintings are flowing through my head at the moment...

Something unexpected

Softly Swaying
acrylic ink and watercolour
19x25cm (image size)
©2011 Lisa Le Quelenec

I'm pleased to report that yesterday was a very successful framing day. I really enjoy mount cutting and framing and I'm very lucky to have a picture framer friend who allows me to use their workshop. The above picture started as a little sketch for drawing practise but when my friend saw it she insisted that I let her frame it - not long after she'd worked her magic on it and this was the result.

The subject came from a bouquet of flowers that I was given and unfortunately I don't know what they are. They look like a thistle/sea holly type of plant and have dried really well.

Signs of Spring

Signs of Spring
29x50cm mixed media
©2011 Lisa Le Quelenec

I think I may need to do another version of this at some point. I really wanted to have more negative shapes behind the daffodils but I got a little too dark a little too quick. I think if I keep at it with the acrylic I'll lose some of the sparkle that I've got at the moment. Those drippy marks toward the bottom were fun to do though, the white is unpainted paper.

The Risk to Bloom

 My first completed daffodil painting of the year, I'm sure there will be more to come. I'm hoping I'm not tempting fate with this painting's title (thank you Willie for the quote). Yesterday was beautiful blue skies and sunshine. Walking at the river and the trees were showing buds and a few new leaves were tentively thinking about unfurling amongst the dead foliage.

I've looked back at some older paintings that I've done over the years and I'm pleased to see improvement in this subject. I see these paintings as a kind of bench mark to check my progress as painter. I've spent a lot of time over the last year working on my use of tone within a painting and this year I want to get more of a handle on colour. Next years daffodil paintings will show how far I'll have come along in that respect. Do you return to a subject to use as a benchmark in this respect? I've heard that some painter's do an annual self portrait for these ends.

The Risk to Bloom

acrylic on paper 17x18.5cm

©2011 Lisa Le Quelenec

Daffodils, a work in progress...

 

Bit by bit I think I might be getting there. There's still a lot more glazing and building up to do, some adjusting to the tones and colours but I am really enjoying this one.

A splash of yellow and sketching

 

Daffodils! I love them - but they are also my nemesis. I love the structure, colour, the thoughts that spring is just around the corner and the winter is coming to an end that they inspire. They are my nemesis because every year I try to paint them and every year it all goes horribly wrong! I have a dedicated sketchbook for daffodils that has been added to over a number of years, (here's a link to my flickr account showing a few of the pages). One of the problems I have is the conundrum of painting delicate yellows whilst still getting enough tonal variation to show the form. I've tried all sorts of colour combinations and mixes using blues and violets, oranges and hot pinks to make the shadow colours but I never seem to get it quite right. Every year I think this will be the year that I will crack it. 2011 is definitely the one.

Above is a photo of some daffodils I got yesterday - with my favourite little jug - behind is a piece of hand painted silk. I think this will be one of the colour combinations that I will try this year. Today has been spent drawing them and tomorrow I will start the a painting. It makes my heart glad to see these cheerful flowers I hope they brighten your day.

Softly Swaying I
15x15cm acrylic on canvas

©2010 Lisa Le Quelenec

Softly Swaying II

15x15cm acrylic on canvas

©2010 Lisa Le Quelenec

I have enjoyed painting these sooooo much! My aim was to get a sense of the flower heads gently swaying in a breeze by using gentle diagonals in the stems and seed heads. Can you sense the movement?

I'm glad I did lots of sketching of the poppies in my garden during the summer. I did them for drawing practise when I was taking a break from painting, I had no intention of using them for paintings back then but I'm realising now just how well spent the time was.

More poppy experiments...

Another poppy experiment using acrylic ink, watercolour and coloured pencils. The original petal shapes were made by printing acrylic ink onto watercolour paper, the result was beautiful texture in the pull of the ink. Once it was dry I added a wash of watercolour and drew in the seed heads with a brush. The dark marks on the under side of the petals were made with acrylic ink once everything had dried.




Glow
20x28cm mixed media on paper
©2010 Lisa Le Quelenec



To bring out more red in the petals I used coloured pencil slowly building it up with varied shades to get a richness of tone. I don't think you can see in the photo but in the dark blotches in the petals there is purple, royal blue and turquoise which zing against the orange and red.



I've promised myself another couple of weeks for experimenting whilst the year draws to a close on exhibition work but I think I can foresee a series of poppy paintings in the not too distant future. ;) I'm really enjoying mixing up media and the looseness and freedom that it involves.

Summer garden sketchbook

It seems we are in for a cold snap this week so I thought I'd share a reminder of summer. They are small scale, about 10x25cm done in watercolour.

I love poppies and we have grown a few different varieties,  I dry out the seedpods to draw every year and then in spring scatter the seeds back out in the garden borders. I particularly like the Californian poppies with their vibrating orange petals that always catch my eye.

Listening to the bees as they dive into the flowers always makes me laugh, the sound seems to amplify and they sound so excited. Sometimes their legs seem so coated in pollen that they can't fly straight and they look like their drunk. The yellow/orange splodge on the page of the yellow poppy sketch was a bee landing on the book. (He left behind a sketch of pollen.) I hope everyone is keeping warm this week.

Poppy pages

I love poppy seed heads for their colour, shape and structure. Here are a couple of pages from my sketchbook just showing you some of the drawing practise that I do and some playing around - mostly these things are just for my own amusement although every now and then I do a finished painting.

On these pages I printed out some photos I'd taken and played around with on the editing program on my lap top. You can see the notes I made to myself, I often have conversations with myself to fire my imagination or give me ideas in my sketchbooks as I know I will look back on them later. I find it really useful to make colour notes and techniques for individual paintings.

I've got lots of sketchbook pages like these, some will never see the light of day again, others will be picked up maybe years later and played with again. Sometimes a whole body of work can come from a few pages of play from years before. I'm definitely the kind of painter that can mull an idea over a long period of time.

Quick sketches for compositions that I might try out at some point in the future. These few pages were an afternoon that I let myself have off to play, I hope it gives some indication of working methods that I use and that you've enjoyed a peek in my sketchbook. In case you have missed my post the other day I've updated my flickr account to show lots more sketchbook pages if you would like to see.

The last of summer

Sunflower sketch in ink and watercolour

I love sunflowers and grow a few different types each year. Normally by August they have been and gone and by now the seeds have been dried for next year and some shared with the birds. This year we had a new bird feeder with three different feeding stations and in one I put some sunflowers seeds.

Unfortunately/fortunately the wood pigeons who are really too big for the feeder knocked it off and whilst I was sure I had picked up all the spilt seed I couldn't have done a very good job. Much to His Nibs dismay we now have sunflowers that have grown up through the lawn. He is under strict instructions to mow around them.