You can find me at http://facebook.com/LPBakerArt – or, if you look in the sidebar you’ll see a “like box” where you can “like” my page with just one click!

I hope you’ll join me there.  Apart from posting my finished paintings, I’ll also be sharing progress pictures and other tidbits related specifically to my art

I put out a call on Instagram for volunteers to have their portrait painted, and Heidi Keyes very kindly put her hand up.  The reference photo she sent wasn’t ideal, having been taking indoors in low light, but there was enough detail that I figured I could invent the rest.

I knew from the outset that I didn’t want to use a grid to get the initial drawing done, as I had done for previous portraits.  If I was going to challenge myself, I wanted to really challenge myself.

I started off on a 12×16″ canvas and freehanded the drawing in using Genesis oils.  I then went ahead and blocked colours in, but as I started adding details I could tell that the original drawing was off.  Several hours of work later, it became pretty clear that it was going to be less work to start over than it would be to continue to try to correct the problems with the existing painting.

At this stage, I decided to switch from Genesis oils to traditional oils. There’s nothing wrong with Genesis, but I only started using Genesis when I had to paint in the house and other people didn’t like the smell of oils.  As I have a studio now, I realised I don’t have to do that any more! No particular brand of oils – I own several, both student and artist grade.  I just grabbed the colours I wanted to use, which were: Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow Light, Raw Sienna, Cadmium Red Light, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue and Sap Green. I used Liquin as my medium because I don’t like to wait days for things to dry between painting sessions!

Once again I freehanded the drawing in, but right from the start I felt I had a much better likeness.  I blocked colours in and was feeling very good about the progress, but as I started to add details, I could tell that the likeness was starting to slip away.  It was very frustrating, because the likeness was reasonable, but I wanted more than that.  At the end of one particularly long day, I decided to do some very careful re-measuring – actually taking a ruler to the original photo and working out exact proportions between features.  Based on that, I wiped away a great deal of the day’s progress – especially around the eyes – and restated where I wanted the features to be.  As it turns out, no feature was out by more than quarter of an inch, but the accumulation of errors was enough to be distorting the likeness.

Finally, armed with the new placement guidelines and new confidence that they were indeed correct, I went ahead and painted details in again.  Fairly quickly, I could see that at last I had what I was looking for, and I also knew (from years of not doing this and regretting it) when it was time to stop fiddling and just accept that it was as good as it was going to be based on my current skill level.

So here’s the final portrait, which I’m glad to say Heidi likes!  It’s oil on canvas, 12×16″.

I welcome feedback and constructive criticism – praise is fine too!  I really, really enjoyed creating this painting and I hope to do more portraits in the future

I’m delighted with how this turned out and I learned a great deal in the process, which was the whole point of doing it

I’ve already selected the next painting to do, but you’ll have to stay tuned to find out what it is!

“Les Coquelicots à Argenteuil, after Claude Monet”
Atelier Interactive Acrylics on canvas panel, 16″x12″

This year I have decided to ease myself back into painting by working through the many tutorial books and DVDs I own.  I’ve read and watched all of them, but never done the work – how silly!

First up was Neil Patterson’s “Aspens”, and here’s the painting that resulted;

(Atelier Interactive Acrylics on Masonite, 24×18″)

I’m currently working from “Ready to paint the masters: Monet in Acrylics”, by Noel Gregory. I’ve started with Les Coquelicots á Argenteuil.  Sadly the tutorial makes some colour choices that make it turn out quite differently to Monet’s original, so while I’m following some of the process the book suggests, I’m basing my colour choices on the original painting.

Here’s where it’s at so far; once again this is Atelier Interactive Acrylics, but on canvas panel,16″x12″.

If you’d like to see more progress pictures as I post them, I’ve been posting them to Instagram, which is now available to web users as well as smartphone users.  My username is: lpbakerart

I decided to sign up for one of Richard Robinson’s online workshops, because I liked how he broke the process of creating a painting down into a series of steps.  I reasoned that I could complete the steps slowly over time, which would make it seem more manageable (part of the strategy my psychologist has taught me).

The end result is I’ve got my first new painting done since March, and although it’s no masterpiece, I’m very pleased just to have done it.  I also learnt a great deal along the way about planning a painting, the use of colour (and grey), and even how to use abstract brushstrokes to suggest detail.

This one is Genesis heat-set oils on stretched canvas, 8″x10″.

This recipe is the result of several generations of experimentation, and I’m very happy with the final result – and so is she!

I make this using two bowls – a medium size one for the wet ingredients and a large one for the dry.  I put each bowl on the scales, zero the scales, measure out an ingredient, zero the scales again, measure out the next ingredient, and so on. That’s why most of my ingredients are measured in grams!  Much less fuss than measuring everything into separate dishes first.  Much less washing up too!

I slice the loaf into 16 slices (it rises quite well), and by my calculations, each 50g slice has;

• 93 Calories
• 0.63g Protein
• 13.38g Carbohydrate
• 4.44g Sugar
• 0.62g Fibre
• 1.04g Fat
• 0.25g Saturated Fat
• 0.01g Trans Fat
• 0.45g Monounsaturated Fat
• 0.28g Polyunsaturated Fat
• 18.78mg Sodium

Obviously, the nutrition will depend on the exact ingredients you use.

If you don’t need the recipe to be gluten-free, you can use normal plain flour.  If you want it to be soy free, I’m sure rice milk or almond milk would work just as well.  We don’t like it to be too sweet, so you’ll notice the sweetness in this recipe comes from the maple syrup, apple sauce and of course the banana.  There’s no reason you can’t add sugar or sweetener if you feel the need.  Just like any recipe, use it as a starting point for your own experimentation!

Vegan, gluten free, low calorie, low fat banana bread

Wet Ingredients

• 125ml (1/2 cup) non-dairy milk (I use So Good Fat Free Soy Milk)
• 30g Maple Syrup
• 70g Apple Sauce
• 60g Vegan Margarine, melted (I use Logicol Extra Light)
• 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• Two large very ripe bananas, mashed well with a fork

Dry Ingredients

• 200g Plain Flour (I use Orgran Gluten Free Plain Flour)
• 70g Cornflour
• 1/2 Teaspoon Salt
• 1/4 Teaspoon Ground Allspice
• 1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder (I use Wards Gluten Free Baking Powder)
• 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F.  Grease a 20cm loaf tin or similar (I actually use a bread tin with straight sides) and line the bottom with baking paper.

In a medium size bowl, combine all the wet ingredients except the mashed banana.  Beat thoroughly with a whisk until the mixture is a little foamy (say, 60 seconds), then add the mashed banana (no need to mix it through, as we’ll do that shortly).

Sift all of the dry ingredients into a large bowl, then add the wet ingredients to it.  Stir well with a wooden spoon to combine.  You should end up with a fairly dense and sticky dough.

Pour / scrape the dough into the prepared loaf tin, and spread and smooth the mix by gently using the tines of a fork (this will help it rise more evenly).

Bake for 60 minutes.  Then insert a skewer, and if it comes out clean, it’s cooked – otherwise, give it a few more minutes.  As a rule of thumb, if it has shrunk away from the inside edge of the loaf tin, it’s cooked.

Allow to cool in the tin for 10-15 minutes, then remove from the tin (remember to remove the baking paper from the bottom) and cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.

Although delicious as it is, this banana bread is even more delicious toasted and spread with margarine!

Apart from being a great painting tool, it also has an application for Mac which lets me open the painting and export a much larger (than iPad) version of the picture, which is very good for making prints.  It also lets me export a video of the painting being made – every brushstroke!

So here’s the painting I made – note that this was intended to be a colour study only and hence I haven’t taken enormous care with the drawing, and following that, you can watch the video and see how the painting was put together.

This is a first for me, obviously, so please leave me a comment and tell me if you find it interesting and/or useful!

Some time ago I signed up to be a part of the second Twitter Art Exhibit organised by David Sandum.  This weekend I finally had the energy to do a painting for it.  It was an interesting experience for me – as somebody who trumpets the virtues of working large, to have to create a postcard size painting was a bit of a shock!  However, the subject I wanted to paint did not contain a lot of fiddly detail, and it also meant I was able to complete the painting in just a couple of hours (spread over two days).

Incidentally, as you’ll have guessed from the title, Pelicans are my favourite bird.  I grew up in a river town and there were always pelicans around, and I just adore them.  I do see them here in Sydney from time to time as well and it’s always a thrill.

As time was an issue (the painting must be in Norway by March 30th), I decided to use my Atelier Interactive Acrylics (I had originally planned to use oils, but at this late stage they would not dry in time).  I had previously painted two coats of gesso onto some 300gsm watercolour paper and drawn a postcard-size box to work in.

First, I did the sketch and transferred it to the paper.

Then I used Burnt Umber and White to create a tonal painting.  You might wonder why I chose Burnt Umber and not black — the reason is, when the burnt umber shows through the final painting, it’s warm, whereas if I used black, it would be cold.  Since this painting is all about sunshine at the beach, a warm underpainting is a must!  To get the really dark darks, I simply painted several layers of burnt umber.

Once that had dried overnight, I painted the background colours in.

Finally, I painted the pelican, plus a few extra bits of colour into the background to bring out a few ripples in the water.

I am very, very pleased with how this one turned out.  It joins “One Day I’ll Learn” and “Surprise” on my list of paintings I’m genuinely happy with – interestingly, all of these had one thing in common: I started with a tonal underpainting.  Seems that I have learned something important about what works for me!

I’m sorry to see this painting go, but it’s for a very good cause.  I hope somebody buys it and loves it as much as I do!

More sadly, our beloved dog BB, who was diagnosed with cancer last year, started deteriorating sharply in December. She made it through Christmas and New Year, but last week we made the choice to have her put down as her quality of life had become very minimal. Of course it was (and is) extremely sad, but she was 15 years old, a very good age for a dog of her size and breed, and she had had a good life with us, so we were able to do one final act of kindness for her. For the first time in 16 years, we now don’t have a dog in the house, and it seems very quiet. The three cats are not quite sure what to make of it all either.

A few days prior to BB’s passing, I started painting a portrait of her, determined to push through my own health issues. I was able to work on it for two days but I haven’t been back to it since. Luckily, this is not a problem with the Genesis paints! I am very pleased with the progress of it so far, but more than a little frustrated that my health is preventing me getting back to work on it. Here’s a photo of how it looks at the moment – it’s on a 20″x16″ canvas.

BB painting, work in progress

I hope you all had a better Christmas/New Year than we did, and I hope we all have a better 2012 than 2011 was.

But today, finally, I felt well enough to press on, and after a while I was a little surprised when I stepped back and realised there really wasn’t anything left to do but sign it

The painting is titled “The End and The Beginning”.  Atelier interactive acrylics on masonite, 18″x24″.  This one is for my personal collection!

Click the thumbnail to see the a bigger image – or to see the full-size photo, view it at DeviantArt.