Freezing the subject without getting cold!

Robin photo Elizabeth Tyler © 2012

Finding subject matter on a cold December day in Sweden isn't always easy, especially since the number of daylight hours is very limited. Although I enjoy plein air painting and always prefer to do most of the work on location, there are days when it's simply not practical. Taking reference photos for later use is of course a good solution and one many artists resort to. Its not cheating as long as they are your own photos. In order to paint birds a good camera is almost a must. But even so it still requires sitting for hours in the freezing cold waiting for the right moment.
Believe it or not, the photograph on the left is taken through the window while I sit in the warmth of my kitchen. It still requires hours of waiting but at least I could sit in comfort.
Firstly I arranged the scene by placing logs and stones on a baking tray filled with water. This was put outside the window on a garden table so the height was suitable for the camera tripod. I waited for the water to freeze then sprinkled bird food on the logs as bait.
Inside the kitchen I rigged up a black curtain to minimise reflections and hide the camera which I stuck through a hole in the material. I connected the camera to the computer with the remote shooting function and waited for the right moment. And waited...
Hundreds of photos later I managed to get this one plus a handful more. I don't know if I will actually use it as reference for a painting yet or maybe it's best as a Christmas card.

Taking photos from the comfort of the kitchen

Cover illustration

Refelections, watercolour 35 x 46 cm 

 I have just been informed that my watercolour painting "Reflections" has been chosen as the cover illustration for the book "Festival of writing 2012" a collage of writing edited by Debi Alper. The festival is arranged each year by Writers Workshop, the world's leading consultancy for first time writers, started by the well known writer Harry Bingham. The festival hosts some of Britain's best-selling authors and publishers. So I am very honoured to have one of my works on the cover of the book.

Art blogs targeted by dishonest spammers!

"Sharron Davidson", Austin Texas,
Pinner on Pinterest with a
keen interest in art

Unfortunately I have had to enable comments moderation, so from now on no comment will be published without my consent. This isn't because I only want positive comments! but because my blog is being bombarded with spam from "Peter Pascal" and "Scott Davidson", not their real names of course. By googling a sentence in one of the comments I've had, I found out that they send thousands of computer generated comments to art bloggers. They pretend to be interested in your art and then have the audacity to write that it's better to buy another artist's reproduction from their company's website Wahooart. There you can choose between hundreds of awful reproductions in any size or colour. When I googled Wahooart I found it on Pinterest represented by a Pinner called Sharron Davidson with a very glamorous profile picture. She has 38 boards, with 541 pins all from Wahooart. When I did an image search of "her" profile picture it turned out to be a photograph of a Bollywood actress called Sonali Bendre! I wonder if anyone would want to buy anything from a company represented by dishonest people with false profiles? I suspect Sharron Davidson, Peter Pascal and Scott Davidson are one and the same person. So to all serious, hard working artists with blogs I would like to give this advice: Enable comments moderation and don't allow any comments to be published without your consent! If you are on Pinterest, don't support this glamorous art lover by following her!

Bollywood actress Sonli Bendre
 http://www.mid-day.com/imagedata/2012/jul/Sonali-Bendre.jpg

Colours in Autumn

September Shore, lithograph 27 x 40 cm © Elizabeth Tyler

Now the leaves are turning colour adding a little warmth to the chilly autumn air. I made this lithograph to depict a combination of two of my favourite subjects, an autumn leaf and a pebble beach. The eight transparent colours I used created numerous nuances where they overlapped each other.
The colours were:
Ultramarine blue
Cobalt blue
Hookers Green
Yellow
Sepia
Crimson red
Vermillion red
Black

Red Cabbage

Red cabbage watercolour 57 x 77 cm © Elizabeth Tyler 

I've had a request asking me to show which colours I used in my painting "Red Cabbage" featured in the downloadable video A closer look at watercolour painting techniques on "Mindbites".

Colours used in Red Cabbage

All the colours are artist quality from Winsor and Newton and apart from Paynes grey they are in tubes. The reason I use tubes is because my paintings are normally quite large so I mix suitable portions of diluted colour in pots. You can extend the life of expensive brushes a lot by dipping them into diluted colour instead of wearing the bristles down on half-dry tablets.
Paynes grey is the exception though because the intensity of this colour is stronger in tablet form.
The other colours used for this painting were:
Cadmium yellow,
Ultramarine violet,
Cerulean Blue,
Winsor blue (red shade)
Sap green,
Pthalo turquiose,
Quincridone Magenta
and Winsor green ( yellow shade)
Here's a link to W&N's colour chart (no I'm not a shareholder!)
colour chart
If you want to see all the techniques involved in the painting of Red Cabbage, the whole video is available full screen HD (streaming) or on DVD. (PAL or NTSC) as part of the 75 min video  Watercolour Realism produced on license by Pulsar Productions, Australia.

A windy day

"A windy day" lithograph 27 x 40 cm
© Elizabeth Tyler 2010

"After a windy day" lithograph 27 x 40 cm
© Elizabeth Tyler 2010

It's autumn again and the old apple tree we have in the garden is shedding apples and leaves in the wind. I love  the interesting structure of the tree trunk with it's layers of crusty bark. It's taken over 70 years for the tree to reach this stage of maturity and not unlike most humans it has great character with the ripe old age. From a distance the trunk looks a nondescript brownish grey but a closer study reveals all shades of green, blue, orange, umber and red.
For each of these lithographs I made eight drawings, one for each colour. You can see the whole printing process with some of my previous works here: From drawing to lithographic print
Best to watch  in HD ( 720p )

Autumn on it's way

Autumn leaves     watercolour © Elizabeth Tyler

I was inspired to paint this watercolour on a windy day at the beach a couple of years ago. When I came home I reconstructed the scene in the studio. It was important to get the light and shadows right so I used only one light source (a daylight lamp) and suspended the flying leaf up with a fishing line.

Facebook page

I've now created a Facebook page for my work as an artist where you can keep on track with my current projects, large and small. It's a good platform for smaller notices that are not so time consuming, neither to  read nor write ;-)
If you don't have facebook, don't worry I will still be posting more detailed information regularly here on the blog.

The page is here:  Elizabeth Tyler- artist

When you get to my facebook page, please click on the "like" tab (under my hand in the banner picture) if you want to see my coming updates on Facebook.

Finished blackbird

Blackbird  watercolour 47 x 74 cm © Elizabeth Tyler 2012

Today the blackbird painting is finished. I had been thinking of painting a diffuse background or just a suggestion of something in the distance but then I thought it was better without. As it is now the white background enhances the contrast as you see the bird against the light.
I paid a lot of attention to the leaves in the foreground as they are nearest and I wanted to give you the feeling they are almost touching your nose. To achieve this it was necessary to draw them from life since they were out of focus in my reference photograph.
I painted yellow as a base colour over the whole shape and when that was dry concentrated sap green was added. While the green was still wet I covered it with wrinkled cling film and left it to dry completely. When the cling film was removed there was a very leafy structure all over the shapes which looked great as it was but still needed suggestions of light and shadow. The uppermost leaf is seen from below so it has a slightly different texture and colour. Here I added a layer of Pthalo blue and, after drying time, yet another layer of light opaque yellow. Again cling film was used while the yellow was wet.  I then added deep shadows with a mixture of Paynes grey and Pthalo blue and finally created the light lines of the veins by scrubbing with a tiny hog hair brush.

The cauliflower effect

The blackbird itself was painted with concentrated Paynes grey and I dropped water onto the surface while the colour was still wet. This creates a cauliflower effect which can be difficult to control, but it helps to hold your breath!
I used masking fluid for the straws of grass and painted the shadows between them first. After the fluid was removed I added different shades of green, taking care to render the light with thinner layers where the blades of grass turn upwards. Finally the darker shadow under the bird was added with a thin wash of Paynes grey applied with a wide hake brush.

Blackbird

 Blackbird, watercolour  47 x 74 cm © Elizabeth Tyler

I have been fascinated by birds recently, I suppose because most of them are shy and unapproachable, this makes me want to get near enough to study them even more. Directly after each shower of rain this blackbird would walk around the garden looking for worms. It was so eager and concentrated that it chose to ignore me. I followed it around with my camera and photographed it at a low viewpoint with a  200mm lens. I took about 40 pictures of it before I was satisfied there would be enough reference material for a watercolour.  Although I mostly prefer to paint from life, it's not always possible and then I take photographs as reference. I never use anyone else's photographs as I feel the creative process must be my own right from the beginning.
In this watercolour I played around with the so called cauliflower effect that many artists try to avoid. This is what happens when you add water to a wet painted surface. The water pushes the pigment away as it spreads out.  The effect can be taken advantage of in certain subjects like this where it resembles feathers.

Painting depth in acrylics

This is an acrylic painting which I have been working on for some time. In it I have experimented with different techniques to create an illusion of depth and distance. By merging the brush strokes and making soft transitions between colours, an impression of unsharp focus can be achieved. This I did with the rocks in the background.
The brush strokes in the middle ground are also loosened up and there are layers of translucent colour overlapping each other, there is intentionally no attention to detail here as that would only add confusion to the composition.
A close up view of this looks completely abstract but at a distance you can see the wet, flat stone.





Every time I paint water it's a new challenge. This time it was the bubbles and transparent, small waves that I wanted to describe. You can see the seaweed and some pebbles under the surface. The colours of these are toned down and the absence of sharp edges helps to give the impression of something a little diffuse, as seen through water.

                                           







 The surface texture on the stone in the foreground is made by flicking and 
 spattering different colours on with a toothbrush.
  I wanted to accentuate the roughness of the stone in contrast to the soft flowing

  water. This, I feel, creates an interesting dialogue within the painting. 

I love to indulge in details and I could hardly wait to revel in them. By painting the stone's surface with all the numerous spots, cracks and crevasses, it became the focal point I wanted it to be.

Painting on my floating studio in Greece

Right now I am in Greece on our small sailing boat "Aquarella". I have all my painting materials on board and the subject matter is right there for the taking. As nearly always in a new place, the first painting I make is of the obvious; like "Sunset-Over-The-Sea" sort of thing. When I've done that it will be time for some more serious work. But in the mean time I would like to try to add some originality to the painting of this obvious subject. Everyone knows that "the sunset over the sea" is beautiful but so what? Everyone takes pictures of it, every evening all over the world  so why bother to paint it? I suppose the challenge is to capture an impression and render it in a way that is unique and that no one has ever seen before despite the millions of sunset pics being taken everyday. But I don't really need to take up such an ambitious challenge at all, I might just choose to paint something for myself as a memory of a beautiful evening.

Breaking the old rules of watercolour.

I've just uploaded a new video to youtube about the techniques I used in my watercolour painting "A study in green" This is actually a one minute preview of the video I have on Mindbites called "Breaking the old rules of watercolour"

In the 26 minute video I demonstrate in detail how this watercolour was made, using mostly unconventional techniques. I worked on it both outdoors on location and at the studio.  Breaking many of the old rules of watercolour painting is something I enjoy doing, it is after all the result that matters. 

I don't know whoever made all these rigid rules of watercolour. As a creative person I hate being told what to do or how to do it. By using a little imagination (isn't that what an artist has?) many different tools, materials and methods can be used to achieve the result you want. And why not?

In the video I show and explain: My way of using masking fluid.

The use of different brushes, pens, sponges, colour shapers, kitchen roll, watersoluble pencils, cutter blades, stencils, saucepan scrubbers, plastic bags and clingfilm.

Not to mention the totally forbidden opaque white!

The whole video can be seen at here http://www.mindbites.com/lesson/19739-breaking-the-old-rules-of-watercolour

Warning: competitions based on facebook "likes"

I'm a bad loser I know, and perhaps a little naïve at times. I really thought I had a chance of winning the W&N prize for the best painting video but I didn't. The strange thing is that I did have the best rating but my competitor on the finishing line suddenly had the most facebook LIKES. Perhaps I'm stupid but I thought that the competition was based on quality and not necessarily on the amount of facebook friends. I'm not saying this was done, but I was shocked to find out that its possible to BUY facebook likes when participating in a competition. Look here!!!!!!
http://royalserviceteam.com/tag/buy-facebook-friends-for-voting-contests
Thanks to all my sincere  friends for voting for me anyway. I'm perhaps a little wiser now...

buy facebook friends for voting contests «

royalserviceteam.com

After completing the payment process you will be automatically redirect to our order form page.Please fill up that form with some information and click on submit button to send to us.

A study in green

Elizabeth Tyler adding the last details to her watercolour.

I've been spending some time on the beach in the early hours of the morning before the sun creates hard contrasts. I love getting really close to my subject when painting watercolours but it's not always possible, and when the wind gets up I usually get wet feet.

In Scandinavia the sea has a completely different colour compared to the bright turquoise and deep ultramarine of the Mediterranean. It's usually a subtle mixture of greys, greens and pale blues here. As a focal point I chose a stone adorned with bright green moss right on the water's edge. The wet moss added an element of vibrancy to the otherwise subdued tones of the sea in the early morning light.

It took several days to paint this subject, so some of the work was done back in the studio. Even though I’m not always able to spend the whole painting session on location I like at least to start and finish the painting there.
 

"Green Sea"  watercolour 34 x 57 cm © Elizabeth Tyler 2012

One day to deadline!

          Now with only one day left to deadline for the W&N acrylic painting video competition my video about this painting in progress looks like it has a chance of actually winning!

           If you would like to give it a push over the winning line by rating it, here is the link:

           http://acrylics.winsornewton.com/en/win/entry/64/

          You can read more about it in my previous post.

 The technique I used in the video is called Grisaille, a method of painting in which full modelling is done in black and white (in this case Paynes grey) and then finished by adding transparent glazes in colour.

Winsor&Newton acrylics video competition

The finished painting "Stones" acrylics on canvas.

I've just submitted one of my painting videos to Winsor&Newtons (artists materials) competition for artists to show what they can do with acrylics. The video has to be rated by site visitors so I hope you will take a look and vote for it. Sorry about the low res quality, the original is better but it deteriorated in the uploading process. 
My son David Elberling
composed and played the music specially for the video.
This 4 minute video is actually an excerpt from the hour long educational art video I produced in 2008 on DVD: "Realistic painting with acrylics".
I don't usually take part in competitions (I'm a bad loser!) but
when I saw Winsor & Newton were calling for entries to their competition about acrylic painting techniques I thought I might try. It took quite some time though to edit the video to fit the 4 minute limit required.
Here is the link to the video on Winsor & Newton's website. http://acrylics.winsornewton.com/en/win/entry/64/  
If you like it please click on the "rate this" tag.

Apple tree in watercolour.

Elizabeth Tyler painting a watercolour on location in Finland.

Right now the apple trees in our garden are blossoming giving me irresistible inspiration to paint another watercolour.  I remembered the enormous amount of work I put into one of my largest watercolour paintings in Finland some years ago. I wanted to paint the whole tree with all the pale pink blossoms in every detail.   The old weathered tree trunk created a contrast to the fresh green leaves and the delicate transparent blossoms.  I painted most of it with the stretched paper on a plywood board lying horizontally on a low table, but every now and then I had to stand it up on an easel in order to step back to judge the overall impression.
The painting measured  112 cm x 83 cm, that's 44 X 32 inches

Waves

"Waves" acrylics on canvas   110 x 140 cm

This painting is one that my husband is particularly fond of so I've decided it's not for sale. It normally hangs in our living room but I hide it away during the Open Studio event here every year.
It took about a month to paint so for practical reasons it was painted from a photograph. Although I prefer to paint on location it's not always possible so especially larger works are done using my own photographs as reference. I feel it is really important to have taken the photograph myself, not only for copyright reasons but also because it is a valuable and significant part of the creative process. Having actually been there experiencing the feel of the wind and smell of the salty air, taking in all the colours as they change in the light and being able to choose just the right moment I want to render is every bit as important as putting the brush to the canvas. I took the shot on a windy day when the sun only revealed itself as a faint warm glow behind grey clouds. The sea is the Kattegat between Sweden and Denmark and this is the only place around here where real waves can be seen rolling onto the beach.
I painted the whole background pale blue to start with and gradually built up the tonal differences with shades of blue and green. The spray in the foreground is spattered with a toothbrush. The colours used were: Titanium white, Paynes grey, Magenta, Ultramarine blue, Pthalo blue, Hookers green and a little Burnt siena.

Parrot tulips

Parrot Tulip watercolour  57 x 77 cm           © Elizabeth Tyler

Said to be the grand finale of late spring, the parrot tulips are blooming right now.  They are some of my favourite flowers to paint and I've often returned to them as subject matter.  With their fluffy, irregular and undisciplined shapes they somehow have a special appeal to me, even more so just before they wilt completely.
 Not unlike people whose colourful character reveals itself in splendour at a mature age.

© Elizabeth Tyler

© Elizabeth Tyler

© Elizabeth Tyler

A short video about a small detail

Just wanted to show you an alternative method of rendering light details on a dark background. Instead of using art masking fluid as I usually do, I find the above technique results in the even edges I needed to depict fine straws of grass. You can't use the method everywhere but in this case I was pleased with the result. It's my own invention but there are probably many other artists doing similar things to achieve the same results.
Agatha Christie once said " I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. In my opinion invention arises from idleness, possibly also from laziness." Anyway whatever, it's the results that matter.

New watercolour "Raindrops"

"Raindrops" watercolour  95 x 40 cm

It's taken ages to finally finish this watercolour, in fact I started painting it last august but left it to "mature" as I often do with problematic paintings. Sometimes I'm just not able to come any further and instead of forcing myself to finish the work, I leave it facing the wall in the corner of my studio. Now I've had time to look at it again and resolve some of the problems that troubled me in the beginning. Some of the thin blades of grass were a bit clumsy before and the overall composition didn't seem to hang together. Now I've defined and lengthened the grass and given the drops of water stronger shadows to make them more visible. The veins on the leaves were drawn in a darker shade and small details were accentuated.
Now I think I will declare it finished before I overdo it.

Open house again.

This week until the 15th April our house is open to the public during "Konstrundan" the annual open studios event here in southern Sweden. Above is a video I uploaded to YouTube in 2010 when we prepared for the event then.

Some of the 350 people that dropped in on Good Friday. Photos:David Elberling.

It's great to meet so many interested people to talk to about art, sell some paintings and get new contacts.  The event is very well organised so all the 150 artists who take part here are easy to find even though we are spread around the countryside. So if you happen to be in this part of the world you are welcome to visit us.

Watercolour - Worldwide.

 I am very happy to say that, after only three weeks, my new e-book has been sold to readers in 14 different countries. Apart from Europe, USA, Canada and Australia, I’ve received many feed-backs from exotic places (well for me anyway) like Hawaii, Tasmania, Oman, El Salvador and Moçambique. I am especially pleased and honoured to be able to be an inspiration for aspiring artists and even established artists who are, for different reasons, unable to attend art schools or workshops otherwise. Although there's nothing like a real "treebook" which of course has it's own quality, the wonderful thing about an e-book is that it can be received in an instant anywhere in the world. It's cheaper too!

One of the 224 illustrations in the book Watercolour in Detail.    Photo: Philip Elberling

The book is available for instant download at 19.95 USD

Finished at last! My new book "Watercolour in Detail"

This is a short presentation video about my new ebook which is now available online for instant download.
The description of the book is as follows:

This ebook in PDF format is primarily written for those who have worked with this medium for some time. Here you will find inspiration for a more advanced and different approach in addition to tips and ideas, practical advice and instruction.

“Watercolour in detail” has 106 pages with 224 illustrations.

Apart from methods, tools and techniques the 14 chapters cover a wide range of subject matter including flowers, animals, people and buildings. Also how to paint the sky and the sea, fruit and vegetables and subjects on the beach. What to take with you when travelling with watercolours and how to find unusual subjects by taking a closer look. A chapter about painting watercolours in large formats covers  important things to consider before starting. The book also dedicates a few pages to mistakes and how to avoid them or correct them when things went wrong anyway.

Finally there are some hints and words of advice about how to look after your finished work.

 If you would like the book it costs 19.95 USD and payment is processed securely by Paypal. Note: The pdf book works on any computer. For iPad just download to your computer first, then transfer it using iTunes.
You can also see more about it at www.elizabethtyler.com

The secret

My disorganised working table in front of the painting: "The secret" acrylics on canvas   40 x 110 cm

Now the ice has melted and the last of the snow has disappeared, revealing the beach again and with it some of my favourite subjects to paint. Stones of all shapes and sizes, dry stones with rough interesting structures, wet stones glistening in the sun, casting shadows and reflecting themselves in the wet sand.
I don’t know why stones fascinate me so much, perhaps it’s just the fact that they are found all over the world that makes them so universal and symbolic.
Jack Penn once wrote: “ One of the secrets of life is to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks.”

I've thought about that a lot.

There was in fact a seagull standing there between the stones and after hours of painting it in every detail and contemplating over it I finally decided it should be removed. The seagull and the stones stole attention from each other and the calm harmony of the subject was jeopardised. In other words the combination of seagull, sea, stones and sand was just too much and the old saying “Less is more” seemed to be the wisest conclusion here.
Perhaps next time I feel inspired to do some detailed work with a bird I’ll paint it as the main subject in the foreground and render the background without focus and with very soft transitions. But that’s another story.

Latest Exhibition

The Swan, photographed by Ann-Mari Johansson

I have just received  these photographs from my latest exhibition at the art society of Hallstahammar, Sweden.
Everything was extremely well arranged by the society who put a lot of work into the presentation, hanging and PR for the show. There has been lot of positive feedback from both committee members and visitors so I am very happy that the arrangement was possible.
The exhibition was also sponsored by The National Federation of Swedish Art Societies. 
At the opening my video The Swan was shown. An excerpt from it can be seen here

Visitors at the opening, photographed by Ann-Mari Johansson

Still Life

A dialogue between two pears.                                                 watercolour  39 x 47 cm                                                        © Elizabeth Tyler 2012  

The great American floral artist Georgia O'Keefe once said "I hate flowers, I only paint them because they are cheaper than models and they don't move." 

I could personally say the same about painting fruit and still life, I don't normally get inspired by this kind of subject but for once I thought I would give it a try. I ended up enjoying describing the surface of the coarsely woven fabric as a background for the soft smooth pears catching the light and casting soft shadows. 

The tablecloth is painted firstly with prussian blue and then with a thin layer of magenta.

The pears were painted with yellow before adding sap green and finally burnt sienna. 

                         

Self publishing

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my latest book about watercolour painting techniques. It's a book for people who have been painting for some time and need inspiration to take a step further to a more advanced and different approach. It has now 104 pages with 207 illustrations and has been a lot of work but it's something I have wanted to get done for several years. This e-book will very soon (hopefully) be available on the net as a downloadable pdf file. Later I will be publishing it in epub format but this involves creating a new layout which has already taken me months to do so I'll wait a while with that. Here I am checking the visual appearance of the illustrations to make sure the colours are as near the originals as possible when seen on different computers. For this I am using a stationary Imac, a Macbook, an ipad2 and my old PC laptop. The 4 different results I get from these (like in a TV shop) gives me an idea of how the appearance of the images and text can vary. I had to change the colour of the whole text from the more aesthetic light grey I had given it to almost black so that it could be easier to read on an older PC.  Some of the watercolour paintings illustrated in the book can also be seen as videos on YouTube and one of the advantages of an e-book is that you can add such links but it was only after many trials and errors with hyperlinks that everything worked. Another advantage of an e-book is that the reader can zoom in on the pictures and see them even closer than I did when I painted them. This meant that all the images had to be in high resolution. So the book is now 200MB and consequently can't be sent by email but will have to be downloaded from a server, There are apparently several solutions to this, I'll get back to that problem later.

Exhibition

From the Swedish newspaper VLT

At the moment and for the next two weeks my works can be seen at my exhibition at Hallstahammar in central Sweden. Unfortunately I couldn't be there myself for the opening but the local art society did a good job in hanging the 27 lithographs and paintings. According to the regional newspaper's art critic Birgit Ahlberg-Hyse it is unusual for the art society to choose an artist whose work consists of realistic paintings. She goes on to say that " it's easy to be moved by the beauty of Elizabeth Tyler's meticulous work" Finally she wrote: "In the lithographs she renders patterns on stones with photographic exactness and the precision is really impressive. But when she paints an old jetty over an undefined shadow or in a watercolour lets birds wade in diffuse water I find it gratifying with a more personal expression."


I can only say I am grateful to her for saying so.

"Vegetation"  lithograph 20 x 27 cm

"Footprints" lithograph 33 x 15 cm

Roses in January

Roses                   watercolour            95 x 40 cm

In the northern hemisphere the winter can be problematic as far as finding flowers as subject matter for watercolour painting is concerned. Buying cut flowers can solve the problem but not only are they expensive in winter, they are often too stereotype looking and perfect. You can wait a few days for them to open up or wilt a little to let them become more natural or you can do as I did to find roses in January. I went to the nearest flower mart, not to the actual sales area but behind the back where all the goodies are hidden. There the rubbish skip, trash bin or waste bin, whatever you call it, can be a virtual treasure chest for floral artists. 

These were the roses I found, they didn't last very long after coming in from the cold so I had to be quick and concentrated. The background is imagined and the roses, stalks and leaves were actually standing in a bucket of water which for aesthetic reasons, I have omitted.

Showing videos

For several years I've been producing art educational videos on DVD about my painting techniques. A DVD is also great way of presenting paintings and the work behind them and I usually have a computer or TV standing somewhere in the gallery or exhibition hall. Also at the annual "Open Studio" arrangement every Easter the videos are shown. This serves the purpose of adding an extra dimension to the more static impressions of the hanging pictures.
In the beginning I just had a bulky box of a TV with a small screen and a VHS video which didn't really do justice to the artwork. Later when I went on to DVD's shown on a 32" Philips flat-screen TV the image quality was greatly improved. This year I wanted to move on to the MPEG4 technique and bought a Grundig LED TV thinking it would be an even better improvement. I was sooooo very disappointed with the result! As an artist the image quality is of course paramount and you want to see all the tonal differences you've painstakingly put into every painting. With the Grundig all the darks were dead BLACK, hardly no greys at all. Skin tones were magenta and light areas were bleached out to WHITE. I tried everything to adjust the on-screen colours but nothing helped so I returned it to the shop. The dealer then recommended a Samsung*, a little more expensive but the difference is amazing! Now I can show my videos on the TV in normal room lighting, the image quality is superb with vibrant but natural colours and a sharpness I didn't know existed! Being ultra slim it has the extra advantage of being more portable too so it's easier to transport to exhibitions. Apart from full HD it also has a wifi connection thrown in and loads of other goodies and if I ever start experimenting with 3D videos it can show that too.

Excerpts from two of the DVD's can be seen here on my website, I am working on a new one about watercolour techniques which I hope will be finished soon.

PS. *This is not an advertisement for Samsung, just a personal opinion. :-)