Kat Johnston

Tag: process

  • Painting: Some more of my bunny in progress.

    [image title=”Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be…” size=”large” id=”1387″ align=”center” alt=”Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: Bunny bunny, cute as can be…” linkto=”viewer” ]

    A little further along, I’m continuing with the progress shots of the other day. I’ve been doing a bit more work on my bunny here and there, and thought I’d better put up a couple more pictures! In this particular one, the bunny has become a bit more refined and I’ve done some rough sketching of the viney curly things for the background. When I do this, I do it in water-colour pencils, so that I can easily remove and rearrange the marks as I need to. I find this, for me, to be a better way of doing it than lead pencil, or pastel, which seem to be a bit harder to remove completely, especially from darker surfaces. Water-colour pencils in a light shade provide enough of a mark without any view to permanency that might occur with other mediums. A simple smudge of the finger or a tiny bit of water and a smudge, and the marks disappear. Perfect for sketching straight onto a canvas… and we all know how I like to sketch!

    Kat Johnston Painting in Progress: cute cute bunnies, just as cute as can be.

    And now a little further along again – I’ve used a fine brush to describe the curling vine-like growths behind the bunny here with a darkish shade. The painting is not yet done – the curling viney thingies are far too precise around the edges – very sharp. I’m thinking that I need some purple, some orange, some vibrancy… I still need to lift out pieces here and there, and, well, I dunno! I’m still working it out. In other words, stay tuned! There is more to come.

  • Photo/Painting: Symbolism, anyone? Oh, and a few bunnies too!

    Kat Johnston Photo: artistic suicide clean-up… I’m not sure whether it’s symbolic, or just a desire for something different.

    So today I got up and popped straight down to the studio… well… not straight down, but pretty close to it in any case. It was time for a clean-up, a clean-out, and a rearrange. I haven’t gotten to most of it, but I will… I’ve started. It counts.

    One of the things I have resolved to do is pull up the outline. It’s been there for over a year now – it’s rather stubborn… but it will be moved. I think that now is about the time where I go ‘oh lord… note to self, don’t do this again. It looks cool, but it seems that masking tape gets ground further and further into the ground and the adhesive becomes more stubborn the longer it is there and the more it is walked over.’ Ah well… I’ll get there! The cards are already off of the wall (I had playing cards splashed across my wall) and at least the most obvious of artistic debri has been disposed of. Yay!

    So now that you’ve seen that, time to post something a bit more ‘artistic’. I’ve started a little painting – this is the progress of yesterday and today (done in two little bouts). Now I will state this: this is still in progress… not done, nor really all that close to it… we’ll just have to see where this little gentleman leads.

    Kat Johnston painting: bunny is progress… this is the first incarnation of it.

    The first incarnation… I’m loving starting on a black base, and working from there. Building up a base of white to define the figure, you have no idea how much I want to stick with the black and white. I love it. It’s so vivid and raw. I could fix up a few bits from there and quite happily go ‘that’s it!’ But nope… I’ve decreed that this picture will be colour. So the first layers go down.

    Kat Johnston painting: incarnation two… it still has a way to go, methinks, but the first layers are down, at least!

    The first real layer of colour… so far, so good. I feel almost weird showing in-progress shots here – I know that the in-between stages are hardly the best indication of how it’s going to go… but hey, that’s what this blog is for: for showing the good beside the bad, the well polished beside the rough cut.

    Phew! Ok, I think that is about it for now. I have a studio to get back to tidying, and more painting to do a little later. In the meantime, I think I may feast on some seedless green grapes. Wish me luck!