dictionary

Tracy’s finished pictures

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Tracy saw a handmade ceramic plate online of a boat and colourful, curving waves. She painted something similar using watercolours in many shades of blue, green and purple, then outlined all the shapes in gold watercolour paint. The boat’s hull is currently white but she might paint it orange or red or maybe vermillion, as the colour in between the two. Decisions, decisions!

Last year we had a session on drawing and painting on printed paper, including dictionary pages. One of Tracy’s daughters loves capybaras so that page in the dictionary was cut out and finally used this year. Tracy used coloured pencils and very dry watercolours for the capybara and left the dictionary entry of capybara free of colour. Once framed the page was given as a present.

For the last Wednesday session the theme was the Live Aid concert of 1985. Tracy drew Freddie Mercury singing under a spotlight in white coloured pencil on black craft paper. She’s pleased as the effect is what she was aiming for.

If you complete pictures from previous sessions please send them to Tracy or Steve. We’d love to see them finished!

Finished pictures

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We have so many different subjects in our sessions that we often start pictures but don’t get around to finishing them.

Here are several pictures that were finished at home from sessions on Frida Kahlo, painting on a book page, Underwater Life, In an English Country Garden, and Chalk Church.

Brenda’s colourful picture of Frida Kahlo is in pastels as are her images of the dragon and the parrot on a dictionary page. The cockerel is painted in watercolours.

Steve’s posterised image of Frida Kahlo was painted in acrylics and the other in black pastel on grey pastel paper with a dramatic pop of lip colour in pink. Chalk Church was created when we visited last month, again in pastel but using many colours for a realistic picture.

Tracy’s images of Frida Kahlo were painted in watercolours, as were the underwater eagle spotted rays. The cottage garden at Sissinghurst is in coloured pencils, lightly pressed on to the paper so the finished effect is delicate.

Well done, it’s great to see all your finished pictures!

Steve’s dictionary pages

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Steve’s surname of Goldson isn’t in the dictionary so he used the pages with the words ‘gold’ and ‘son’ on to create images of other words on the pages. He used soft pastels to draw a golden eagle and a man wearing a sombrero.

Very imaginative, Steve. Great colours and details you’ve achieved with the soft pastels, well done!

Graham’s dictionary page experiment

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Graham chose several pages from the dictionary to paint on, but before he starts he tried painting on a spare dictionary page to experiment with how much water to use with watercolour and gouache paints and he tried using a pen too. His process is really interesting and is useful to everyone who has painted a dictionary page or who wants to paint one, especially his technique of mounting the page on scrap board to start with. The dictionary will be brought to future sessions in case anyone wants to paint more pages.

In Graham’s own words and photographs…

“I was determined to test the Dictionary Page paper to see how much abuse it would take.  Firstly, I mounted it on some scrap board. This gave it rigidity. Then I drew on it, deliberately doing a fair bit of rubbing out and re-drawing.

For the background watercolour wash I adopted my usual procedure of wetting the paper, then putting in very faint wet washes, and as the paper dried, ever stronger and less wet washes.  The paper stood up to this exceedingly well. It might be interesting to see how the page reacts when fixed to watercolour paper.

When this was all dry, I tried painting the rear figure with equally wet into wet washes. This failed abysmally.  All the washes bled beyond where I had applied them, and they did not mix well.  When dry, to try to redefine the edges of the figure, I applied some white gouache tinted with the background colours.  

For the man with the umbrella I tried applying the watercolour with a 50/50 mix of water and gum arabic.  This thickened the paint and stopped it bleeding but left it looking very streaky and unsightly.

For the man on the bicycle I mixed all the colours in the palette and applied them with a fairly dry brush, often taking most of the wet paint out of the brush with a tissue.

Once all the paint was dry I applied fresh colour to several of the washes on the other two figures.  These were similarly applied fairly dry paint.  The paler colours were again mixed with gouache so that under washes would be covered.

Finally, I did some ink drawing .. I’m not sure how successful that was.

This was all very experimental.  Glueing the paper down was certainly a good idea for me, and I will continue to do so when using a wet medium.  I was surprised how well the paper stood up to the original wet washes and to the number of layers of paint I could apply to the figures.  I used watercolour throughout. 

The lesson I learned was to apply it in a “dry brush” fashion.  Although I suspect Gouache and acrylic paints may well work better on this sort of paper I shall continue to experiment using watercolour.

Happy Experimenting and Painting 

Graham”

Thank you very much, Graham. To read your process from start to finish was very helpful and having the photos too made each stage easy to follow. Many of us have found that a dryer application of paint is the way forward and once one page is painted we want to paint several more!

Paint on a book page – June 2024- Wednesday

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It was a quiet session with only eight members but what we lacked in numbers we made up for in creativity. Painting on a book page proved to be very satisfying with members painting on different types of paper, much thinner than our usual watercolour paper so we had to paint carefully. For those who didn’t bring their own paper there was a choice of books to choose from including a phone book, an RAC guide book, a couple of tatty old novels and a dictionary from eBay costing the huge sum of £1.79 including postage. No new or precious books were harmed during the session!

Removed from the dictionary were pages including the words married, wedding, sunflower and quokka. Words requested to paint another time include hare, lobster, crab, octopus and vulpine, so hopefully these pages can be shown when they’re finished.

Susan suggested this subject and we all agreed it was really interesting. She used a book about opera that had belonged to her late father. Watercolour was used to paint images from an opera on the page where that opera was listed and the paper absorbed the watercolours very well. A very clever idea, Susan.

Christine used an old map to paint a picture of Truro Cathedral on. The third photo shows the painting of Truro Cathedral in acrylics, just above the city’s name. An excellent way to use an old map as many of us have old maps just hanging around that we don’t look at any more.

Kay used the dictionary pages with the words marriage and wedding on to paint pictures of a bride and groom. They will be framed and given as a gift at a wedding she is attending later in the year. What a great idea for a unique present.

Wendy chose the dictionary page with the word sunflower on it and painted a bright and colourful sunflower in acrylics. The page accepted the acrylic paint really well.

Years ago Patrick typed a page about Zoroaster, the ancient Persian prophet. Instead of staying in a file the page has been used to paint an image of Zoroaster. In coloured pencil and pen the page has been repurposed.

Tracy chose the dictionary page with the work quokka on it. Look closely at the first photo for the definition of a quokka. She drew the animal in pencil and painted it in watercolours. Although the dictionary page is very thin, it accepted the watercolour paint well and the colours will be built up layer by layer, allowing drying time in between. There are other dictionary pages Tracy wants to paint but she may paint those in acrylics.

Angela gets a gold star for painting her two pages whilst on holiday in Devon. She had a National Trust magazine with her so used two pages to paint on. One she painted yesterday whilst chilling in the garden, the second today whilst 40mph winds blew outside. Typical British holiday weather! The first picture of a rose ties in nicely with our next session of ‘In an English Country Garden’.

Two members painted to their own theme. Denise repainted a friend’s garden plaque and Peta continued with her painting of a tram.

Well done everyone, there were some super ideas here.

The old books will be brought in to the next session, so if you missed painting on a book page you can cut out some pages to use. If there’s a particular word on the dictionary you want then email Tracy with that word and she’ll reserve the relevant page for you.

The next session is on Saturday 22nd June from 10am to 3pm.