Water | Ronnie Tucker - Pet, Wildlife & Portrait Artist.

Posts Tagged ‘water’

New oil painting: Riverside

Feb 21, 2010 art, oil

Yes, I finally got off my lazy ass and did a new oil painting.

Riverside - oil on box canvas - 16" x 12"

I also recorded the entire painting process which I’ll hopefully be uploading to YouTube shortly, as a ten minute video, although it’s a biiiig file as I’ve kept it at 640 pixels wide rather than the usual teeny tiny 320 pixels wide. I’ll post again when the video is up and running.

Tags: barn, clouds, house, landscape, location, mountains, reflections, riverside, scenery, scenic, sky, trees, water

Working on a new ink drawing, A3 size!

Jan 5, 2010 art, ink

I really enjoyed doing the (now sold) ink drawing I called ‘House by the Lake’. I’ve now started a v2.0 of said drawing using A3 watercolour paper and a 0.1 Liner pen. It’s going slowly, but surely:

Although I have to admit, I’m dreading that big tree on the left and the dark background. It’s taken about 3hrs of drawing to do what you see above! I love ink sketches like this, but sometimes I just don’t have the patience for it!

Tags: 0.1, drawing, grass, house, ink, lake, landscape, liner, pen, reflection, sketch, trees, water

Atelier Interactive – acrylics for oil painters?

Dec 25, 2009 acrylic, art, oil

If you’re anything like me, then you love how you can noodle with your oil painting hours, sometimes days, later, and you’ll also hate how acrylics dry so unbelievably fast. Well, Atelier may well be on to something here with their ‘Interactive‘ acrylic range.

Atelier Interactive is a relatively new acrylic paint from Atelier, the main difference between plain Atelier and this new Interactive paint is that Atelier claim that you can keep the paint active by misting it with plain water.

I bought a set of these paints several weeks ago and gave them a quick try, and I have to say: I am impressed with them. The only problem is that, even when I’m using oils, I tend to use very little paint… so little in fact that my oil paintings are usually dry within just several days, but having forced myself to blob Atelier around, it really does stay active as long as you keep an eye, well… a finger, on how it is drying.

The idea is this: you gesso your painting surface and, once it’s dry, begin painting. The trick, is to gently dab your paint with your finger and if it is becoming tacky, it’s time to mist. Not very scientific, but it works. Even after I’d left my test painting for an hour, I could still slightly reactivate the paint.

The only problem with this unscientific method is how much to mist, how often to mist, and from what distance to mist. That takes time and perseverance, but if you’re willing to tinker with them for a little while the Atelier Interactive‘s are definitely a step in the right direction for acrylics, and I’ll definitely be using them again in the future.

Tags: acrylic, atelier, canvas, interactive, mist, oil, paint, painting, spray, water

Why I love Winsor & Newton Artisan Water Mixable Oils

Dec 25, 2009 art, oil

Winsor & Newton Water Mixable Oils

Disclaimer: I am not sponsored by, nor affiliated with, Winsor & Newton, so this article is what I genuinely think of their water mixable oil paints – having used them exclusively in oil painting now for several years.

Oil paints have been used in art for many many years and the formula for them has remained largely unchanged for just as many years.

The one down-side with traditional oils is that, in my opinion, you need to use some sort of turpentine or white spirit with them and, as you can imagine, using such hazardous materials is not only dangerous but can leave an awful adour in your home/studio. Yes, you can get odour-less equivalents but it is only really odourless to humans, the same can’t be said if you have pets in your house/studio.

One of the great things about the Artisan oils is that you can wash your brushes (and your hands!) using nothing more than just soap and water.

The old adage that oil and water do not mix does not apply here!

The paints themselves can be thinned down using water. In fact, in a recent issue of an art magazine, one artist used them to create a painting which looked as though it had been created using watercolour but was in fact done used watered down Artisan oils! You can also use special W&N linseed oil to thin your paint with too.

The paint itself looks and feels just like any other (non-water mixable) oil paint that I’ve used in the past, so there’s really no need to change your techniques or other equipment and the paints come in a rainbow of colours, all be it that I only use about seven or eight colours at most.

If you’ve always wanted to try oils but are maybe allergic to turps/spirits then give Artisan a try, you can buy them in starter kits with just a couple of tubes, through to larger sets with about ten tubes per box.

Good luck!

Tags: artisan, canvas, linseed oil, newton, oil, oils, paint, painting, paints, soap, turpentine, turps, water, white spirit, winsor

A comparison of Derwent Aquatone, Derwent Inktense and Caran D’Ache Neocolor II

Dec 23, 2009 art, ink, pencil

First of all, this test is far from scientific… it involved me doing a light scribble of each colour on some rough watercolour paper then applying some water to one half of the scribble. The idea being to show how the colours look, dry, on the paper, and to show the change in colour when the water is added. The reason for the light scribble is that a heavy scribble can not only damage the paper, it makes it harder to remove the scribble from the paper as the colour has become engrained in the paper. A heavy scribble will get your brighter, deeper, colour – but it is usually best to achieve this through layering. I’ve also tried to pick the same colours from all three sets, but colours (and names) vary from box to box, so I could only get similar colours.

So, on with the comparison…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: aquatone, brush, caran, d'ache, derwent, drawing, ink, inktense, neocolour, painting, pencil, stick, water, watercolor, watercolour