Sketching artwork at a gallery

Took a much needed break, visited my boyfriend in Scotland. He was happy to see me, really.

Been sketching the Rossetti Triptych at the mcManus Gallery, whenever I visit I spend a lot of time starting at it.

I like how Rossetti is a master of classical form, his drapey is nothing short of genius and I know I could paint my whole life and not capture what he does, using the subtlest of brushstrokes he can suggest features, nay, expressions.

I noticed he elongates certain aspects of the body; like the hands. I kept having to mentally correct  myself sketching from them, to keep it more in line with his painting.

 Also managed to find my favourite sketching pencils; derwent sketching- in burns & harris. They've been sold out everywhere i looked at home, okay you could get fancy versions of them but I much prefer the original

Lagomorphia

 

Need to get cracking on my Lagomorphia paintings, I have a craft fair on the 4th need to have 6 other paintings finished for then,as well as run up a bunch of prints,cards and postcards for it.

And I have 2 Commissions to do. 

As well as my Uni sketching,painting and drawing.

Wraargh!

my stall at a friends craft fair.

brief painting series

Just completed this.

It's one of a series of 6 I have going into the shop tonight.

in situ;

Kim Annabella

xo

Portrait Commission

(click on the image for a larger size)

Aileen Wynne 18"x24" Acrylic on Canvas by Kim Annabella

evolution of a portrait;

Kim Annabella

xo

I had a fun long Samhain Weekend full of Witchy happenings and frolic, and a visit from the family. It's time for me to get to work now on my paintings, with a bit of time off Uni for my art,craft & design this week due to mid-term I can finally get stuck right in.

my new studio is the far end of my living room. It's a beautiful old house, opposite a tree filled park. I love to sit with a cup of tea at the big bay windows looking at the goings on outside.
There's 3 spare rooms, i could use any for a studio but i like looking out at the trees. It's calming.
My last apartment was teeny, part of a converted gatelodge, I was over a bookstore. Must say it's nice not to feel the need to be quiet between opening hours anymore.

Dot "helping" my painting by taking a snooze on the couch.

Have spent the last eight weeks working flat out sketching, I am excited to see such an improvement merely from putting pencil to paper everyday. My eye for distance and perspective, shading, tone and line has refined quite a bit.

To be fair I hadn't though myself capable of much more, not in an arrogant way. I just thought I'd reached the end of my abilites, which was frustrating but i was trying to be inventive enough with my limitations. Now that I have a good mentor, enough time, and materials and hopefully with enough continued dilligent application-I know it's not the case.

It's an odd perspective, revisiting uni at 28, (my last time there was 28, due to the implosion of the heritage sector i.e. archaeology I had to do something with my time besides belly dancing and pug breeding and fecking off to scotland every few weeks visiting the boyfriend) Having spent 4 years studing history of art,it seems bizarre to paint from your own eye. And not have every single image that's stood the test of time crashing in on you, but I think I'm managing to be less critical of my work and more loose, and experimental.





I'm planning on spending so much more time on learning the rudiments.

I want to learn flemish oil techniques http://rourkevisualart.com/wordpress/2006/07/30/the-flemish-method/ , how the tuscan masters painted and the basics of painting nudes and portraits.

I figured new books on the subject would be fairly ineffectual (water colour challenge, step by step how to paint a cat etc) given my influences and where I want my style to end up it's leaps and bounds on from that

(unless anyone out there wants to pay for me to go study traditional renaissance painting in venice for 4 years, and i dont think that's very likely or worth the cost of it myself)

so I've gotton some older one to teach myself from

a 70's book on painting nudes; i love the tones, very lucien freund like.
a book on traditional portrait sittings from the turn of the century
some of ruskins books deconstructiing paintings (not in a theoretical way, in a practical way)
some treatise on drawing and painting the pre-raphaelites either wrote or would have learned from.

a couple were google ebooks, I also ordered from awesomebooks.uk (very useful for reference books, and cheap. I got some of the world of art series for 2.50, and they've taschen's for next to nothing,too) and scouted ebay.

they had a felician rops i got outbid on by a few pence : ( fecking ebay


I seem to be veering back into the occult again.
Had a dream about an occultist, very real and bizarre, felt like doing a painting series on it. 

I also want to use my background in history of art, archaeology and witchcraft to introduce symbolism into my painting, that requires more thought than composing the paintings themselves.

I have 3 books of heiroglyphic like drawings, all individual series of paintings, everytime i think of a new one, i sketch them right in.

Many i get from dreams.fully formed images. those are the best one's, once I have the technical ability I shall be all over those


like, this weekend. because of the dream i mentioned above, i sought out a psychic for a reading to see if it would be a good idea to go ahead with the series, or would it spew forth a lot of negative energies into my life.

turns out the lady herself was holding a ritual in her magic shop, on samhain. it's at the site where 35 girls burned down in an orphanage fire. She didn't know anything about witchcraft though she carries some items she focuses more on spirituality and the tarot. I said I would come along to assist.

http://www.rte.ie/tv/scannal/cavanfire.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavan_Orphanage_Fire

she had some interesting things to say to me; thinks i should go ahead with the series I was thinking of.

The night before the ritual I was thinking of a dream I had on the fire, and the idea came to me to do a series based on it. It would be sad to do, I can find very little images. But Cavan has a nice working library and I'm sure that there's going to be some left alive I can speak to, of their families if they want.

Well, that's me talked out. I'm off to start cracking on these bad boys.


Kim Annabella
xo