Monday, 5 October 2015

Fishing Bear & Tweed Triceratops...

 This is my first attempt at painting a bear using one of the reference photos I took from the webcam in Alaska.  There was not much colour in the photo so I had to do a lot of it from memory plus some guesswork!  I think if I was to do this again, I would omit some of the background, but onthe whole I am quite pleased with it. 

I nearly ruined it in the final stages however - I wanted to use my new diffuser to spray white acrylic ink over to give the effect of water spray.  This was not as easy as I thought, as the ink clogged up the tube a little and I ended up hyperventilating to get it to work.  There was some strategic placement of kitchen paper to prevent it going everywhere as it is quite hard to control.  Just when I thought it was done and dusted, I picked the diffuser out of the ink bottle & reached across my painting to put it into the water pot....and dripped huge gobbets of white ink all over the bear!  Argh!  Luckily I managed to get it out very fast.

I'd like to try another one using what I learnt here, but next up is a dog portrait.
I also finished this triceratops today - he's made from some fancy Harris tweed that I bought at Thread the other day.  It is a nightmare to hand-sew as it frays very easily, but once it is sewn, the end result is sturdy enough.  This was using a Japanese pattern I have.
The horns etc. are from orange felt.  This took a while to assemble, but always worth going the extra mile as the detail are what makes it special.  He is for sale in my Etsy shop.

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