Kingfishers and Crafting…

Well its been a good few weeks since my last blog post as I’ve been a busy bee getting reading for the upcoming WITA (Women in the Arts) Showcase on Friday 8th March for International Women’s Day (exciting! See links on my social media for more info), amongst personal ventures, product testing and getting out and about taking new wildlife photos for Spring artwork. Lots going on and then there’s always the things to find the balance in between! Its a work in progress, but it makes life interesting!

So this weekend I decided to move away from experimenting and go back to what I know and that is watercolour painting. My most recent piece is ‘Kingfisher Dreams’, A4 (approx 11″x14″) watercolour on 300gsm paper, with Pigma fineliner archival ink detail.

The main inspiration for this piece is a dream I had earlier this week (I know, sounds unbelievably corny but bear with me!). I’m not a massive follower of dream analysis, but I do believe that sometimes in our dreams our subconscious brings to our attention things going on in our lives that we need to take more note of, or to change the way we are thinking about something in some way (or alternatively, its just something wacky and wierd that I won’t bother repeating here! :p). In my dream, the kingfisher flew above as me and my family members watched on in awe. I was quite in awe myself having dreamt of a kingfisher – I can’t say I’ve ever dreamt of one before, or had the fortune of seeing one in real life either. If you Google kingfisher dream meanings all sorts of things pop up as you might expect, and it was a surprise to me that they are often associated with marital bliss and prosperity – maybe due to the brightly coloured plummage? You learn something new everyday right?! One of the meanings that really resonated with me though was regarding being content with one’s circumstances, not in an ego-fuelled way, but if acceptance of life how it is, both good and bad, which is certainly an important skill to foster. So meanings aside, it was lovely to just paint something new in the style I am finding that I am most familiar and stronger with. I am also lucky enough to have a friend who is a photographer who kindly let me paint his photo of a kingfisher and above is the finished result. I added my usual coloured splats but deliberately placed in a semi-circle, almost like a crescent moon; a subtle addition which I think suits the title of the painting well. What do you think?

Before I painted this piece I took some time to experiment with producing some handmade cards as experiments and ended up producing three cards, each with pros, cons and something to learn.

The first piece above is painted directly onto an ivory linen card – a beautiful cardstock which has a lovely finish and feel to it. I drew the outline lightly in pencil and then built up the layers of watercolour gradually, using Windsor and Newton Cotman pans. Once dry, I added little lines and flicks of Pigma Fineliner black ink pens, which are high quality archival ink pens and highly light-fast. This piece was inspired from a photograph I took of a robin at Whisby Nature Park in Lincoln. The card held quite well and warped only very slightly as I added a tiny bit too much water – sometimes you have to get a feel for how much liquid the paper can sustain and less is often most definately more.

For the second piece I reproduced the same design but this time painted the robin onto a piece of water colour paper and then glued the paper onto the card. This method was much sturdior and although most people I asked preferred the first robin, this was the most popular format, minus the writing.

This is the first time I had attempted my own handmade fine art cards and deciding what to include and what to exclude is definately a skill in itself. Either way, it gave me the pen and ink practice I was after at the same time.

I also experimented with some pen and wash designs (again from my own photos) on recycled brown card of a bit lower paper weight this time – 240gsm so not quite as thick and luxurious but 100% recycled with matching brown recycled envelope.

The Pigma Fine Liners worked really well and with such staying power, I even managed to do a wash of watercolour over the top, like a sunset sky, without any of the ink running, which impressed me. The main drawback of these cards however is the weight. They are a little flimsy and could do with being a bit thicker for quality purposes. A minimum of 300gsm or higher cardstock seems to be the optimum weight and when you are wanting recycled paper/card, often the quality level drops a notch. I have ordered a 300gsm variant though and look forward to experimenting on that to see if there is any significant improvement (I sense a gap in the market!).

So the eco-friendly search continues as I prepare pieces old and new for my upcoming exhibit at the Showcase. I lool forward to showing you my work, as there’s nothing like seeing art up close than compared to a photograph.

February Flashback…

Pinch and a punch and another month has gone already! January seems to have flown by in the blink of an eye and today being the 1st February, what better day to look back and reflect on the previous month in terms of art.

For me, January was all about warming up (quite literally in some ways, as its been so cold recently) by practising and honing my technical skills, along with trying some new mediums and planning for the months ahead. I started January with a pencil drawing of Keira Knightley from the recent movie ‘Colette’ and here is the finished result:

I drew this piece from a movie poster reference I found at the back of an Odeon cinema brochure (perks of being a movie enthusiast). Keira has such a beautiful face with such strong and defined facial features so I thought she would be perfect to draw and practice my pencil portrait skills.

If you look closely, the poster has a lot of small technical details too, like the fine details of the clothes and texture of the straw hat (and yes, that is a giant and a mini movie clapper 😛). I sometimes get a little impatient with capturing every single little detail (one of the reasons I tend to prefer more impressionist art) so this on some levels was technically a challenge for me, demanding a lot of patience and observational attention. It really is a case of taking your time, making sure you get the proportions right and building up from there. Like most artists, once I’ve mapped out the overall outline of the piece I tend to start shading with the eyes and work outwards, taking care to blend lines softly as I go (I actually use a cotton bud for that! I tend to avoid using my fingers now as I’ve found that transfers oils onto the page and you get smudges in places you really don’t want them). Considering I worked from an A5 brochure page and drew freehand onto A3, enlarging the face to fit a good amount of the page, I’m pretty happy with the likeness I’ve created. What do you think?

Moving on to paintings, I decided to give the Pebeo Discovery set a go which I brought with a Hobbycraft gift voucher and you can view photos of and read more about my experiences of producing my newest painting ‘Love in Space and Time Part 1’ in my previous blog post. I look forward to developing this series with less common subjects as well, including the less commonly beloved pigeon. I do often like to appreciate and find beauty and wonder in the ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ and like the idea of placing them in more ‘wow’ and spectacular backdrops, such as the breathtaking background of space. For me, it takes something relatively normal and makes you think, is it really something we should consider as just ‘normal’ or of lesser value? How people judge animals according to their appearance and other characteristics is fascinating to me.

Away from hibernating indoors, I’ve enjoyed spotting wildlife and taking photos for my upcoming work at beautiful Whisby Nature Park where in particular, I enjoyed taking photos of adorable garden birds in Whisby’s dedicated bird hide. I also enjoyed a bit of photography at Baytree Owl and Falconary Centre in South Lincolnshire where I got to see many beautiful birds and all sorts of animals as I took tonnes of photos in snap-happy delight. I won’t show the best photos just yet as I look forward to featuring these in my upcoming art work soon.

So what next? Well, I will be preparing for upcoming fairs (details soon make sure you follow my Facebook page @gemmajohnsonart for updates) so that involves producing some new work, getting prints and greeting cards made etc, as well as making use of existing stock. In the process I aim to continue to experiment in my work as well along honing my skills with existing tehniques and am excited to share new work with you for the upcoming seasons ahead. Is there anything you would like to see in my upcoming work or any particular subjects for Spring and Summer?

Although the cold has very much now settled in, the days are noticeably starting to get little lighter and I’m sure it won’t be long now before those small peaks of Spring will start appearing. A frosty daffodil here; sprigs of delicate pink blossom there. I think we’re all ready for the exburance of Spring and I feel like its going to be an exciting time of both growth and change.

Speaking of time, have you seen my newest piece I’m currently working on as well (I have lots of different things on the go, as I like to dip in and out of pieces) of our lovely current Timelord Jodie Whittaker, aptly titled ‘Dr Progress’? Life goes on, as they say and I look forward to showing you the completed piece soon…Until next time.

Space Birbs! Symbolism in my new painting ‘Love in Space and Time Part 1’ and new creative ventures

They say in life you should keep reaching upwards until you touch the stars. Well, I know its a total cliche, but I think in any craft its important to keep learning and growing, so that’s what I aimed to do in my new painting, ‘Love in Space and Time Part 1’ (or Space Birbs as I fondly like to refer it on a more casual basis). I wanted to challenge myself by taking a familiar subject to paint and place it in unfamiliar territory, using materials I’ve never used before to put together an abstract interpretation of space in all its colourful, galactic glory. I also wanted to expand my comfort zone as an artist by trying something new and this is the finished result:

‘Love in Space and Time Part 1’ mixed media on cotton canvas, approx 9″x12″

So why birds in space?

On a simple level, I wanted something striking and to make an impact. Something on one level which is pretty light-hearted and fun in concept. Space birds sounds pretty cool right? On a deeper level, in terms of the inspiration and thoughts behind the painting, it is about connection and interconnection. How we are all droplets in the universe and splatters of amazing creation, not built to last but yet how our emotions, such as love, are things we all share to some degree or another that could be seen as things transcendent of space and time. We love people even when they are no longer with us. I wanted to juxtopose a creature that I strongly adore (the bird) with a space-like background, which I created with mixed-media techniques, in order to bring to the foreground the connection between space and such an amazing animal. A connection which doesn’t exist in our immediate reality and which we don’t commonly make on a daily basis (the closest thing I can think to birds in space is Angry Birds which unsurprisingly was’t where the inspiration came from…). I chose a pair of birds to represent love, and placed them on a branch which, if you look closely, is entwined into the infinity symbol. What better symbol to coincide to both the literal vastness of space and an emotion like love. Grey tits and blue tits probably aren’t a natural pairing or anything we would normally associate with love – I guess I could have chosen actual lovebirds if I really wanted to pump up the symbolism. However, I don’t think it especially matters which birds are chosen, as the gaze of the birds and overall feeling of the painting for me is enough. Love can and always will come in all shapes and forms after all, and not just exist in established imagery.

Technique and Process

At first, I wasn’t really sure how to approach the painting in terms of order. Should I paint the birds first and then paint the background around them? I thought I’d just try the pouring technique with the Pebeo paint first and see how that turned out and just go from there. I firstly painted my canvas with two coats of black acrylic paint using Windsor and Newton Galeria in Mars Black (no intended pun). When this was dry and I began the pouring process in a well ventilated room. Pebeo Discovery set paints are unfortunately solvent-based so they require a bit of airing out. If you’ve never used or heard of them before, they basically produce different paint effects as they dry and interact with each other. I used Pebeo Prisme in Buttercup and Caribbean blue which produce a kind of honeycomb effect, combined with Pebeo Moon Turquois which is the one which really interacts and blurs with the paint. I added a few drops of Vitrail in Limon and Crimson which I think people tend to use more for ceramics but they had a nice transparent effect which added a bit of depth and contrast. You can see these in the more red and deep pink areas of the painting. I left the messy abstraction to dry overnight to ensure it was completely dry before I started painting over the top and here is the result:

The Pebeo had dried a smooth glossy coating and I wasn’t sure the acrylic paint over the top would take, but I started mapping it out anyway using a but of mixing white to roughly map out where I wanted the birds to sit. I decided looking for and utilising shapes in the dried Pebeo might work best so I selected a big blob of yellow ‘planet’ for the blue tit to sit on. It worked pretty well.

I built the acrylic paint up in layers and it was useful that when the paint first went on the canvas it easily wiped off the Pebeo if I wasn’t happy with its placement but then dried securely. At first I nearly just left the background as it was, as I quite liked that the birds almost looked like they were melding and becoming a part of the universal background, as you can see below:

However, I agreed with comments that it would be a shame for the birds not to stand out, so in addition to adding flecks of titanium white acrylic to represent stars and galaxies, I also added pops of pink behind the birds to make them really stand out. The pink dried more red in places but I quite like how that matches the Vitrail Crismson used elsewhere in the painting. Here you can see the mix of red and pink in the background and I also include a few close-up images of how the acrylic has mixed in with the Pebeo (just be careful to clean your brushes afterwards with a solvent remover as I found they had absorbed some of the solvent).

Overall, I’m very happy with how the painting has turned out considering it partly started as an experiment. It now just needs a coating to finish it, either a varnish or an epoxy resin. I’d be really interested to know your thoughts and comments on the painting, and if there is anything you thought or felt about the painting initially or if anything has surprised you after having read this post.

What wildlife in space would you like to see me paint next? Comment below 🙂

Artist Statement and Welcome to my Blog

‘Gratitude’ A4 watercolour with copper gilding flakes embellishment

Hi and welcome to my blog! My name is Gemma and I am an aspiring portrait and wildlife artist from Lincolnshire, UK. I am currently creating wildlife art using watercolours, coloured pencil, acrylic paints and sometimes mixed media. I am creating both pencil and paint portraiture. I am continuously inspired by nature and the human relationship to it, especially its capacity to make us feel better and this is something I try to encaspsulate in my art. Recognising the benefit of nature and wildlife to us as humans helps us to recognise its value and gives us another reason why it is important to protect it, nurture it and to be grateful for its presence and impact on our lives. In 2019, my goal is to explore the relationships between humans and nature in my work, bringing my portraiture and wildlife art together and to explore how as an artist I can be more eco-friendly and reduce my ‘artist’ footprint on the natural environment. This blog is here to document things I am learning and developing on this journey.