Andre Jute's Blog

Portraiture in watercolor can be pretty tricky, at the very least more difficult by a factor than in oils. But watercolor has one great advantage: transparency. Here is a selection of pigments, with their catalogue numbers on the Schmincke Horadam watercolor list, which in various mixes will give you a wide choice of skin tones … Continue reading How to make realistic skin tones in watercolor

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I ordered packs of cards for intaglio and block printing but the blocks aren’t ready, and the editions are intended to be nine prints only per concept while the packs of cards and matching envelopes are plentiful and commonly in stock with my arts materials pushers. So I repurposed one of the cards for Valentine’s Day … Continue reading Making my Halloween card with the Valentine’s Day card

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I’m struck by the number of people who stab their linocutters and woodcutters into corks to protect them. Cork is an abrasive material and that can’t be good for the edges of expensive knives from Pheil or Japan. Also, your fingers come near that very sharp edge every time you put the cork on, and … Continue reading Keeping Pheil Lino & Wood Cutters Safe, and Your Fingers Too

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 Summer will come again. It will! It will! Photos by my pedalpal Helen Lane. Andre Jute is a novelist and painter — and a cyclist — who lives in West Cork.  

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With technical notes for painters: The Christmassy image is of Dee-Dee Jonrowe racing down the Yukon in the Alaskan Iditarod race. The “green” and the “black” is the same paint, Perylene Green PBk 31, self-shading by glazing layers. The only other colour is PR254, universally available as Winsor Red. These two mix well for a … Continue reading Merry Christmas!

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On the centenary of the Russian Revolution, from a sweeping storyteller comes the eighth and concluding volume of a ten-family saga 30 years in the writing. CoolMain Press Proudly Announces Publication of Glasnost Book 8 of the 75-Year Saga Cold War, Hot Passions by André Jute After 75 years of lethal plotting, from the October … Continue reading In the centenary year of the Russian Revolution, this is the key thriller you must read

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In the six years since John Baker in 2011 broke Lance Mackey’s run of wins, no one not named Seavey has won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Dallas Seavey (left) has won four times and father Mitch Seavey (right) has won twice (he also has a win in 2004 for a total of three … Continue reading Dallas Seavey stands accused of doping his Iditarod dogs.

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You know for a fact that Winsor Green is PG7 or PG36, depending on whether it is, respectively, blue shade or yellow shade, right? Not anymore, it ain’t. A new 14ml tube of Winsor Green Blue Shade arrives here without any fanfare. It is numbered 719 as Winsor & Newton has always numbered it. But … Continue reading Weird Goings-On with Winsor & Newton Color

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A year or three ago John Saxon, a chum from the Thorn cycling forum, published a photo of the backyard of his friends from just over the mountain where I was born, the mountain separating the two towns strikingly prominent in his photo. I promised to paint the scene but, when eventually I finished the … Continue reading Andre Jute: Early morning mist over the Bay of Quinte, watercolour and gouache

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A cool, overcast day, just right for a ride in the green and beloved isle. Check out these giant puffballs between the road and the river. They’re fully twelve inches across. Edible. One of the party came back for these puffballs in his car. This is our destination, Kilmacsimon Quay, a village of a handful … Continue reading The Puffball Ride in West Cork

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