National gallery of modern art - Picasso exhibition.

Well today we visited the Picasso exhibition. I'm kinda undecided as to whether I like his work or not! Not doubt he has skill, his sketches that I saw, I thought were beautiful and I'd never seen them before, very simple delicate line only sketches. His paintings ........ well honestly I'm not much of a fan, his palette that he uses I like for the most part, but the actual images, I don't like them that much, I find them quite ... disturbing almost when I actual saw the real thing, not an image in a book or online. The way he paints women, he's not very complementary! We are told that art should be question and listened to and what hearing from his subjects is "help get me outta here!" And the question I'm asking is "what on earth is going on in that head of yours Pablo?"
I did however enjoy seeing the Hockney pictures that were also part of the exhibit, particularly the photo collages, they were amazing! Far better than I could of imagined! The effect of all the individual photographs all put together and actually how many individual photos they are made up of is amazing, from the other side of the room it does look like its made of god knows how many separate photos! I also tried to copy a lithograph of hockney's on my iPad, (below) I don't think it's come out to well it kinda shows a rough idea of it, the original was pretty darn big! Hockney believes that Picasso's cubist work was a turning point in the pictorial arts. His influence is obvious in the works I saw today.
I also spent sometime playing around with photo booth on my iPad and taking photographs of the outside of the gallery. Some interesting results and fun results!

The Haining

I've been playing around with photoshop touch on my trusty iPad, and this is my latest creation with 2 photos I took on our visit. I changed the effect to sepia tone on both, reduced the opacity on the top one and selected a merge option to difference. I think it looks like an old grainy photograph.

Trying to get working

Well today in an attempt to get my head around a close family member in going through and how I feel about it, I decided to pull myself together get painting! I'll admit that my art work has ground to a halt this passed ten days and I'm finding it really quite hard to get going again. But today I gave myself a good kick and cleared the work space out and got the paints out!
Firstly I poured some paint onto some glass which I'll photograph later then I thought that's not enough, so I dug out a canvas.
I began by brushing on the green paint (which is for the heart according to healing colours) with a dry brush, I did the same with some Paynes grey but it just wasn't feeling right.... What to do? It needed more feeling, I went to the kitchen and there was some cling film, so I thought that that might help so I dabbed it on which created an interesting effect then I found some bubble wrap and dabbed that on which when I looked at reminded me of cells which fits in well. But it all needed to be enclosed hence the dark frame, the white was added to give the feeling of fading away. I quite pleased with it now.

iPad orchid

Here's a little doodle I did today whilst waiting for the tea to cook! Still getting used to the brushes app, it can be a bit tricky controlling the lines sometimes and mixing the same colour as you used a couple of minutes ago, but all adds to the finished effect! I'll work some more on this later, maybe add in leaves or more flowers before they all drop off the plant!

Observation of my hand

Today we drew our hands, quite tricky!
I started off drawing the outline with a pencil I then changed to charcoal to build the tones and shape of my hand, I also added a little white pastel for the highlights. I couldn't get the charcoal to stay black enough for the really dark creases in my hand so I used a conte pencil, which I really like!
I'm really quite pleased with the result, the only part which I feel I could of done better is the thumb area.