Dale Copeland oil on aluminium 100x100mm This is my partner Dale. She is an assemblage artist, website writer, mathematician, teacher and a long time friend, and mother to our daughter, Toby. She doesn't approve of social media sites. Despite this, she gets far more likes and attention than I could ever hope for. When she learned I was painting my Facebook friends she immediately changed her profile picture to this one. I was tempted to paint the old one, but I'm happy with the way this one came out.
I wanted to try a monoprint using the slow dryng Open Acrylics. I used a rectangle of white perspex as my plate. Being white this made it easier to see what I was doing. I spent quite a while working on the plate, probably as long as I would on a regular painting. Regular acrylics would not allow you to do this as they dry too quickly. Here is the image I pulled off it, printing on a small ethching press. The image is of course reversed. I wasn't too happy with it really. I thought it looked better o the perspex plate! However, regarding it as a learning process I perservered. There is usually a ghost of the image left on the plate after printing, so I reworked the image more loosely this time and produced the two further prints below. They are a bit more lively, but I still wasn't happy with them. I was wiping the plate clean when I thought I'd give it one more chance. I like this one the best of the lot.
I have made an initial start on the large portrait of Anne Sitting. As is usual when painting, your present work will spawn new ideas for further work and exploration. While I was painting Anne's portrait last year, I realised that a more complete picture with her sitting in the chair would be a truer and more compelling portrait. She habitually wears many layers of dark clothes and has these lurid orange plastic shoes. The shoes became a problem for me on the last portrait as they kept distracting my eye, and I asked her to wear different ones. It became something of a joke between us, and we both agreed that for this painting she sh ould wear them. I began our first sitting by making a few preliminary drawings. Drawing is always a good way to get to know a subject. It doesn't matter that they are rough or crude; they are not intended to be finished artworks. They are working drawings and you start to get a feel for where potential p...
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