This was a task I did in readiness for next term with one of my art classes. It is after Rob Adams, whose pen and ink is excellent  I didn't have blue tonal paper, but created my own with watercolour mixture of ultramarine and cerulean blue.  I drew the stones in ink, and dipping pen, and after finishing off the ink I used white acrylic ink for the highlights. The over all effect is quite good.  I will use this technique again but perhaps play around with the colour backgrounds and vary my mark making a bit more. Below are some steps taken to achieve this painting.

This week has been a great deal of stress trying to get tasks done for classes in September.  I have painted and sketched a few tasks now but this one completed today was really interesting one, inspired from an article about a Russian Artist ( Ksenija Koloskova ) , her technique and colours are very moody and creative.  I tried my best to do a similar result. However, using plain mixed media paper was not the best choice neither was the scale, I should try a larger paper next time. I like how the style of the painting matches the grittiness of the scene, ancient ruins that reflect the brutality of Rome. Below are some images of the steps I took.

This was a result of using pastel pencil on pastelmat paper, this was a demonstration done in an art class last month.  Having spent a term in this class working in pencil and watercolour on pastel mat, and being inspiried by Jason Morgan a Welsh pastel and oil painting artist.  I was suprised how great the paper takes layers of pastel.  This was very engaging to do with the use of watercolour washes as the first layer and then added pastel pencil strokes to build up the tones and the final stages of the white wiskers were added at the end, I particulary like the eyes. I hope to attempt this method on my Spaniel again.