Looking very blue...

Had a good look at the picture tonight and decided I can leave any further work on the grey underpainting...it's not perfectly balanced and the details are missing from the fingers etc...But there's enough there to guide me with the colours over the top. So went back to the tiles, darkening the green ones. The colours in these photos are FAR too blue... the actual painting has much more green showing through.

I think I'm going to go over all the darker tiles and then work on the bubbles and water a little before moving onto the flesh...that's the current plan anyway.

More orange and grey...

Did a bit of work on the still life this afternoon, I want to push the brushwork a bit further in this picture. I have to resist the temptation to blend everything in...Anyway, both pictures are in a rough state at the moment, but I promise to get some colour into at least one of them this week...:)

Still Life

Thought I'd get another picture on the go and liked the look of some mixed chard and apples that Sheila picked up from the market stall this morning...I played around with the composition a bit, drew it up and then sealed it all in with some more lovely orange acrylic. I've taken photos to work from as it'll all be eaten long before I finish painting it :)

I won't do any underpainting on this, the drawing and acrylic are enough of a base. So it's all ready to start sloshing some paint on. With any luck, I'll get this and a couple of other pictures done in time for Artsweek...as it occurs to me currently I don't have anything new for that...

Happy Valentines day

Roughed in the brush, soap and flannel tonight having FINALLY settled on the colours I wanted... Next I need to do a bit of balancing on the flesh tones and add a bit more detail around the fingers etc. All in all, it seems to be coming along reasonably well so far :)

I've been thinking I should try and find a more commercial angle in some of the pictures I paint, perhaps I could explore a few more still life subjects (similar to the "pears" picture on my website) or include more appealing figures...i.e, use pretty girls, rather than me when I need a model...

"I" like the idea of the drummer picture, but I wonder how commercial it would be...or how commercial this current painting is...

I don't want to start producing boring, middle of the road work that sells a bit. But if I could find some extra ingredients that...

...what gibberish am I writing...I just want to sell more work...clearly I've written enough for tonight :)

Some progress...

Finally pulled my finger out and did a bit of painting tonight. Got the hand done and then did a little on the bath and bubbles. Just sploshing the paint on again. I'll try and get the soap, flannel and nail brush done tomorrow, then I can start tweaking the tones a bit before getting onto the next coat...

This photo's very poorly lit, the tiles in the top corners are much darker here...but actually that's just the effect I want in the final painting...I might actually use this awful photo to guide me when painting them...:)

Bad Artist...

So there I was, having a quiet pint on my way home from work, when three young Lady's accost me and scold me for not having updated the blog this last week...How right they were...So, having finished my chores for the evening I thought I'd sketch out my idea for the first musician painting.

The plan is to have a musician in a trance like state...lost in the music as it were. In this case I've got him playing the drums on an upturned bin, while listening to the soundtrack on headphones...the picture is set in an old abandoned workshop, so there's nothing else musical in the picture...only what's in his head...

I've got half an idea to add a group of birds taking off in the background, but it might be a bit twee...and i really like the texture in the workshop...so I might leave them out.

One of the reasons I've not been blogging is because I've been working a bit on the commission I mentioned before. Anyway, all seems to be going well with that (Hello to you if you're reading this ;) ) I might post "some" elements of that picture when I start it, but the personal nature of the painting make it more of a private affair and not something to be gone into here in any detail...

Anyway, the Jack painting and the drummer are more than enough to keep me in blogging material :)