Author: ellabella

Sky OneElla Wolfnoth original oil paintingOn traditional gesso wooden panel 18×12 CM framed in oakFramed size: 99×99 CMPart of the series ‘100 Skies’ £200{PURCHASE} Payment and postageFree UK postage, please message me if you require shipping worldwideYour painting will be carefully packaged and sent recorded with trackingPlease do contact me for any questions or special commissionsMany thanks...

‘Last Sleep’ colour layers, I always put off this stage for as long as I am able to, enjoying the underpainting map before it is hidden forever, I always feel this stage of a painting is like being in early teens, not complete and quite a way off, showing some potential, but quite undeveloped! The fist layers I have washed in with veils of colour to try not to over saturate the...

‘Last Sleep’ refining the background, always a scary stage moving forward and covering the details underneath, but they will come back later in a different...

Last sleep (16 x 22″, oil on traditional gesso board), another layer of the under painting, previous layers and pencil marks now hidden, I shall be sad to lose this layer to the next, but it must...

I have been quietly working away on this beauty and watching it unfold on the board, it has been slow going between other jobs and trying not to rush finish it, but I feel like I am making good progress. This painting is also a lot larger than my usual A5 boards, ‘Last Sleep’ is 16 x 21 inches, below are some progress pictures. The process so far: > Traditional rabbit skin glue on my board, two thin coats, sanded. > Umber wash to tone the board, OMS and umber. > Various amounts of sketching and scaled drawing to get the right composition at this point, it can take a while to get the drawing as I imagined it in my head. I use a wax based pencil Faber-Castell Polychromos or a Pitt Pastel, this way I can erase as much as I need to. When I am happy I seal this layer with a fixing spray. > Umber under painting, sometimes called a grisaille, it will help me to determine the darks lights and mids of this painting, I try to omit all colour at this stage. This is where I am at in the image above so far....

A dear writer friend of mine asked to see some of my sketchbooks, to me they are the usual mumblings of working out paintings, colour palettes, gesso recipes, ideas and thoughts! To her they were a glimpse in to an artists mind, they were precious visual diaries, with scraps of colour here and inky words there. They were the unfinished ideas and pages, blossoms of new ideas and thoughts, all combined in perfect little books spilling out of the edges into her...

Dreams usually inspire my thoughts in someway and it can be a source of brilliant ideas, I recently had a dream about a dormouse visiting me, and we had a wonderful time together in the dream, she was also sleeping in a bed of flowers, o so still while sleeping and I did not want to wake her, but I was also unsure if she was still breathing. I woke up form that dream thinking ‘I must make that into a painting’. The next early evening while out with walking Olls, I found a dormouse in the middle of the road, it looked like they had been hedge cutting and she had fallen into the road, exposed and cold on the concrete, I picked her up along with a bundle of grass and carried her home to get her warm and fed ready for releasing when she was strong enough. I did not have the heart to leave her in the road for a car to squash her or a cat to find her. After following advice we could find on the internet, and realising our mouse was a vole, also making a den in a small box somewhere warm with grass, and feeding her goats milk, she took her last breath in my hands, she was just not strong enough to survive, being so young and tiny. We...

Long over due a post here! In between breaks in gardening and pottering, recent finished painting ‘Night-time’ 4×6″ oil on wooden panel, on traditional gesso. Process and final painting. Super happy with the finished painting and the star details in the...

I always like to think about the final colour of a painting as I am working towards finishing the drawing stage; I hope to have colour harmony through out the painting; it also helps me to look at reference materials and colour match any colours I like at this...

^ ‘Patience Garden’ oil on wooden panel. Process from traditional gesso, through drawing layers, to oil...

^ Ultramarine blue warm – orangey red warm Ultramarine blue – orangey yellow cool Cerulean blue cool – orangey red warm Cerulean blue cool – orangey yellow cool ^ Cadmium yellow deep warm – magenta warm Cadmium yellow deep warm – cobalt violet cool Yellow lake cool – magenta warm Yellow lake cool – cobalt violet warm ^ Cadmium red deep hue warm – chrome green warm Cadmium red deep hue warm – viridian green cool Alizarin Crimson cool – chrome green warm Alizarin Crimson cool – viridian green cool ——————————————————————————————— Above a selection of colour palettes, using compliments to find greys to find warmer greys, and cooler...

^ Faber Castel Poloychromos, graphite mechanical pencils, pencil rubber. All the tools I like for sketching ideas, rough sketches and polishing...

^ Quick twenty minute floral sketch. Not sure if I will colour this, but it is nice to draw from life when you can, noticing all the details of the leaves and...

^ Working on pinks palette, larger image here. Pinks and peaches, by using a warm red and a cool red and adding white and sometimes yellows, I can explore making peaches and pinks in varying shades....

Silk bow study 8 x 10 inches Polychromos on traditional gesso...

^ Value studies, it is always good to refresh your mind and your eye when working with lights and darks and shadows. I like to work up from a grey scale and add colour over the top matching the colour to the grey shade. Munsell grey scale is a good reference for working with...

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‘Autumn’ Oil on paper 10 x...