Author: Mollie Lennon

Hello,

I’m just going to let you know that I’m going to be experimenting with my websites themes, backgrounds and other stuff.

Hello,

Today I’m sharing a quick little painting I did for Anzac Day. This is an acrylic painting done on a generic canvas, Mum crocheted the poppies.

I hope everyone will take a moment to remember those brave soldiers……………..

Hello!

These are three photos I entered in the Nature Study Photo Competition.

A friend told me about the photo comp so I scrambled to pick and enter the photos before the entries closed. The results were published a few days ago and though I didn’t place it was still lots of fun!

The yellow flowers was one of the many bulbs we planted a few years ago, the mushroom was in one of our paddocks and the magpie was happening to be standing in the grass when I went out to take photos of our chickens!

Hello!

Today I’m sharing some of the progress photos of the pug. He took me around 3 weeks to complete and is a 11×14 inch in size. He was done on Daler and Rowney Hot pressed 300gm Watercolour Paper using Faber-Castell 9000 Series Graphite Pencils. The reference photo came from Pixabay.

Hope you enjoy!!

Today I’m sharing some photos from a shoot I did last year starring my pony Stormy. My aim was to get a clear and clean action shot of Stormy jumping. The only way I could get Stormy to run and jump without me running along side him is if I free lunged him in the round yard.

What I’m going to do is critique each photo (what I like/what I could improve on) so you can learn from my mistakes and apply that in your own photography!

In this first photo it is a clear image  and Stormy is positioned well in the frame which  is good. There is nothing that is dragging your eye off out of the shot. The only problems I can see is the front of the jump is blocking his front foot and the black post behind his neck is in a bad spot. All in all I’m quite happy with this photo.

The pose that Stormy is in looks like its frozen in time which I like but the black post is there again which is a little distracting. This one is reasonably clear and Stormy looks nice and shiny. The end of the jump goes out of the frame which pulls your eye off a bit. I do like this shot.

Stormy’s position in the frame is really nice and the image is well focused, I’m beginning to get the feeling that I didn’t place the jump very well as that black post is in a bad position yet again! The jump is also cutting off a lot of his leg. Not a bad photo though 🙂

This photo is very clear and Stormy’s position is good, I like this one because it gives you the feeling your down low, more at his height and he looks relaxed. Hey look! There’s that black post again!! This photo has hit the nail on the head for me 🙂

Which one was your favourite? Please feel free to comment which one you liked the best!

I really hope you have learnt something, Thanks for reading!

Mollie

Happy Australia Day!!

Today I just wanted to share a quick little project I did for Australia Day.

This is an acrylic painting done on a Mont Marte Canvas. These canvas’ are quite rough which makes detail and smooth edges quite hard, but for this piece it didn’t really matter to much. I used Liquitex Basics paint.

Well that is all for today,

Thanks for reading!

Hello, I am back!

Today I’m going to be sharing some of my all time favourite Coloured Pencils! These are all artist quality and all with a bit of a price tag, so just warning you!

Polychromos

Polychromos Coloured Pencils are oil based pencils made by Faber-Castell. They have quite a hard lead in them that makes fine detail a piece of cake and they also work brilliantly with Powder Blender. They have a nice colour range including lots of yellows, reds, blues, greens and greys. There are up to 120 colours which you can get in sets or open stock. (Just letting you know they don’t come in the wooden box, mum bought that) I think there are only a few pencils in the full set that aren’t 100% Lightfast.

Derwent Drawing Pencils

Made by Derwent, these coloured pencils are completely different to Polychromos. They are wax based and have a very soft lead, they blend really smoothly and  are very opaque. Unfortunately they only come in sets up to 24 but the colours are very soft and neutral, great for wildlife art. They don’t hold a fine point so its hard to get fine detail. They are more suited to doing soft backgrounds. These are all Lightfast.

Lyra Rembrandt Polycolour

These are oil based coloured pencils like the Polychromos, They blend really smoothly which is awesome. These and the Derwent Drawing are a great combo for soft backgrounds. Since they are oil based they also work great with Powder Blender. They come in sets and you can also get them open stock, with a range up to 72 colours. I have only recently bought a handful of them so I haven’t had a great deal of experience. I think I might need to do a few more experiments, but another great pencil. There are only a handful of pencils in the full set that aren’t Lightfast.

Luminance

I thought I better mention the Luminance Coloured Pencils made by Caran D’Ache. As you can see my one white pencil has had a bit of use! (Its about 5cms long)  These are wax based and are very opaque. Now I only have tried the white but I have heard great things about the rest. They have a lot of neutral tones that are great for wildlife and portraits. They have a range of up to 76 pencils which you can also get in sets and open stock. These are ALL Lighfast. (and a bit pricey)

Well I hope you have learnt a bit from my run down of some of my favourite coloured pencils!!

Thank you for reading,

Mollie

Hello Everyone, I thought as it is my  first blog post I would show you some of the steps it takes to complete a finished piece of art. What better painting to show you then  Esky’s Portrait! I used Liquitex Basics and Heavy Body acrylic paints on a Fredrix Belgian Linen Nature Core Paint Board with a airbrushed background. (This was my first attempt at using the airbrush for a background and I’m quite happy with it!) Its always is nice to have a nice smooth surface to work on if you want to use an airbrush and get fine detail. Here are a few in progress shots of Esky’s Portrait. I spent around 10 hours on this painting and as you will soon see some of the early stages are a bit scary!

There it is!!! A little insight of the layers and stages it is needed to complete a artwork. To get a nice end result you have to push through those ugly stages!

Thanks reading my first blog post.

From Mollie