Drawing and Doughnuts and Queen's University, student artworks. A well being session

I recently gave a drawing workshop to a group of students who are studying at Queen's University, Belfast. they were from all different subject areas, from Economics to Philosophy, languages to IT. Every subject, except art. I admire universities and colleges who encourage student interaction outside of their immediate comfort zone, and this mix of students paid attention and came up with great results. I appreciate that some of them may have turned up because of the bribe of 'doughnuts', but they all drew while they munched! 

The challenge for me was that I only had an hour or so. What to teach for such a short period of time...? I decided on spheres, using compressed charcoal on tinted paper. This medium is fairly swift to use, and the lecture was about LIGHT and SHADOWS. 

My demo board, including explanatory labels about light and lack of light. 

Oil painting demos of sphere and egg shape, showing light and shadow behaviour. 

The results! All excellent! 

It was good fun to go out of the studio to teach for a change. 

For info on weekly classes, workshops and group sessions please email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk

Website: www.juliedouglas.co.uk 

Sky Portrait Artist 2020 - the prep!

'Brass Neck' - oil on linen, self portrait, Julie Douglas

Self portraits aren't really my thing. But when you enter a competition, and they ask for a self portrait, there is no option... I only had two weeks to complete it so had to decide very quickly on a composition that might attract the judges eye, and work round the clock, between classes, to get it done. I used to play the Euphonium when I was at school and was borrowing one from a local brass band, so decided to get a few distortions going in...

I happily admit that when I got the phone call from Sky saying I had a got through to the televised heats, I was slightly in shock. Oh yes! Oh NO!!! The challenge is to paint a portrait in 4 hours, while being filmed constantly, with a live audience, and popping outside at regular intervals to be interviewed...

So I had about 6 weeks to practice painting portraits, in 10% of the time I would usually spend on a painting. I would like to thank everyone who so kindly modelled for me. Most sat for me in the studio, some let me take a reference photo. I really enjoyed the process and all the sitters ejoyed it too, saying they were surprised at how relaxing it was for them. I can't say it was 'relaxing' from my side of the easel, but I learnt a great deal. I managed to complete 15 speed-paintings before the programme was recorded, of David, David, Claire, Conor, Ben (three different ways!), Catherine, Rachel, Ken, Amanda, Alison, Rory, Clive and Jonny. You are all beautiful and much more beautiful than I managed to capture in the limited time available. Thank you so much.

Here are some of the practice ones - and yes, I ALWAYS did a drawing first, and included that in the 4 hour time limit. Each drawing took around 45 minutes, leaving me 3 hours 15 minutes to paint.

These 7 paintings were all completed over 5 days - bit of a marathon. 

Alison

Conor

Claire

Ben

           

David - I did paint David too, this was the prep drawing

Clive

David

Jonny

Amanda. Amanda was my first sitter, and she is a massive fan of the SKY portrait competition - consequently we laughed and talked too much! So once I got this far I had to chuck her out so I could get ON!!! Ahem. 

Amanda

Ken

I will write another post about the day of filming... 

For info on workshops with me at BARA studios, please emial julie@Juliedouglas.co.uk

Upcoming workshops include Friday Night Life drawing, portrait drawing, two week oils workshop in April 2020 and weekly classes. 

Portrait drawing and colour study, 'Christie, graphite pencil.

One of the most important parts of my painitng practice is the preparatory drawing stage. If I skip this  step and go straight to paint, I am always sorry. And in many instances I will put the painting on hold, and complete a drawing study before returning to the painting. 

Why would you bother?? Because 'drawing' is 'information gathering'. 'Drawing' is familiarising your eye with the subject, both in shapes and in tonal variations, and on a subconscious level it helps you make ALL the decisions that you will have to make during the painting stage - but minus the colour. The better your drawing, the better your painting will be. Bearing in mind the millions of decisions being taken while producing a painting or drawing, it is NOT quicker to sidestep the drawing stage. Instead, it is more painful, as all the decisions are being made at once. 

These photos show stages of my drawing of my son Christie. A very handsome fellow, I know! 

The drawing took many hours over several weeks. The fabric took the longest time! I drew using 2H, and F pencils, on A3 cartridge paper. The next stage is the colour study, and this is the BEST fun! 

The point of a colour study is just that - it's not a mimiature version of the final artwork. This little painting, around 6 inches x 3 inches, took about 45 minutes of blobby heaven, and is much more detrailed than need be. I showed it to Christie, who thought he looked like he'd been stung by lots of Bees. Well, perish that thought! This is straight to paint, no drawing, just mixing colour and setting it down, keeping planes clean, and separate from each other. 

With all that preparation I am sorry to say that I have started the final painting twice, which is one time too many!! I oredered linen, but it was thickly toothy and I didn't like it. I put down an under layer, which took about 3 hours, but decided to stop. It's so much better to listen to your own gut - and quicker to start again early in the proceedings, than torture yourself for days before conceding. 

Upcoming workshops- portrait drawing and painting 22 - 26 July

Oil painting 22 - 26 August

Life Drawing Friday evening 19 July

Life Drawing weekend - Fri 26 & Sat 27 July

For info email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk

Oil painting, 'Vernon', step by step

There are so many photos here that I thought I'd show you the finished painting first! (to see the preparatory stages scroll below to the previous posts). I had two weeks from starting the canvas to my deadline, and while I thought I wouldn't manage it as I was teaching during the same period, I decided to go for it. 

Vernon, fully finished oil painting. 

The initial stages are always hideous-looking. The best way to describe it is that it's an act of faith. We paint towards how it WILL look, seeing everything as part of the greater process.  I transferred a line drawing trace from my pencil drawing onto canvas, which gave me a blotchy placement guide, then did a base 'wash' layer to lay in some tones, going very lightly on the face, only on the shadow areas. This is the stage where the amount of work ahead becomes dreadfully apparent. Gulp. 

First stage, not looking pretty, but a start. 

 Next evening I put in the flesh areas, the first layer of colour. The face and hands took about two and a half hours and were done in one sitting. Colour was laid in small 'tiles', and not rushed.

First layer of flesh

Between classes next day I whacked on the first layer of the coat... still 'tiling' but with larger strokes. 

                                  ...and scrubbed in some background colour (see below).

Saturday night and I had to address 'the hat', aaaargh...! Even in the drawing stage this had been a challenge, and I spent a few hours redrawing with pencil on the canvas, then layering in the pattern using raw umber before painting the lighter chunks in between the stripes. Then I slathered on some beardy tones. 

Huge palette, tiny dog..?! Faithful little Minnie keeping an eye on me.

I gave the beard a second look, and decided it looked like it had been stuck on.. So I darkened it a bit... 

 ...then decided I needed more flesh tones to work beneath it so painted more shadow-colours on top (see below). It looks like the photos are out of order, but they are not. So, I painted a beary area, then let it go by painting over it - always be prepared to remove, rethink and repaint.

I then gave the flesh (face and hand) a second (final) layer. 

Then it was Friday, so I crammed in a few hours before the Friday Night Life class, and tackled the Christmas foliage behind the head. Once I got into the swing of it, this was fairly quick, and quite satisfying/a relief to cover a large expanse of canvas.  

This pic also shows the chunky blocked-in hat.

Saturday was the Marathon day. I did 12 hours straight, with a one hour break in the middle for a cuppa tea and a chat. I painted a second layer on the coat... 

...and after dinner, which my son kindly brought to the studio for me (what a star!),

Dinner, cooked and delivered!!

 I could put the hat off no longer... 

I worked from the top, down. 

The 'secret' to working on something complex like this lies in what you're listening to. All day I'd had the BBC iPlayer in the background. I'd had the final of masterchef on, several episodes of 'The Twinstitute' (I can only have documentaries on, otherwise I can't paint!) and for the hat it was two hilarious programes by Billy Connolly, so I actually laughed my way through it! By 11pm I'd had enough and packed up. This is how it looked - all done bar the beard and the baubles on the left. 

I took Sunday off as I was tired.. And Monday was deadline day. I worked on the beard...

...darkened the background, tweaked the 'join' between beard, eyebrow and background, and completed the baubles. Just in time for the deadline! PHEW!! 

Upcoming workshops with Julie in Belfast Academy of Realist Art: Friday Night Life drawing, 1st Feb  6 - 8pm

Children's workshop, portrait workshop, pet painting workshop. 

April 8th - 12th: Paul Foxton gives his Munsell Colour Mixing workshop.

For info on all workshops please email julie@juliedouglas.co.uk