Where is Morph I hear you ask...

Trying something new today…I’ve videoed this painting as its developed…Hopefully you’ll be able to play it back (not sure about you Mac people…let me know ;)) anyway, this is about 3 hours work compressed into 3 minutes…surprising how little of that time the brush is actually on the paper, lots of drying time, a bit of drawing and masking time…then general tea drinking and dancing around the place…luckily you can’t see that :)

I think this works MUCH better than the live TV concept, which was…

a: DULL.

b: didn’t work very well.

c: Distracting from my point of view

So I’ll try and improve the framing, lighting, general quality and keep doing things in this format from now on :)

As for the picture itself, I thought I’d do a small series of Blenheim Palace watercolours. Took a few photos there yesterday as the weather was so nice…though strangely I ended up doing this painting with a very grey sky…am enjoying being MUCH less ridged with my photographic source material, not something I’ve naturally done in the passed, but a lot of fun once you get into it…Anyway, I think I’ll put this into the Oxford Art Society exhibition at Woodstock Museum, hopefully it’ll be selected :)

And finally…One of the Lake District paintings is on show as part of Oxfringe next week, see their website for further details. :)

Well that’s it for today…nearly beer time :)

Fennel part 3

Doing some more work on the Fennel still life today, starting to add in more detail…needs to dry a little now before I start putting the main shading on the bulbs themselves. Am reasonably pleased with it so far. Hopefully the next phase will really start to bring it to life…

Today I’ve mostly been listening to Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello, while being annoyed by the lack of framerate on the webcam and enjoying the snow falling outside the window…Hope you’ve all managed to find a couple of nice moments in your day too :)

In My Head

Did this today. Pastels, charcoal and watercolour. An attempt at a portrait of the inside and outside of my head…clearly it’s very messy in there/here…

First pass work in progress...

Well the live video appears to work, some you’ll be able to see just how SLOWLY I work…;) This is the painting I’m working on, I took this with the webcam, it not a great image, I’ll take one with a proper camera soon. Anyway things are progressing; I’ve got the first pass of the stone in and am starting to block in the fennel bulbs. I’m trying to keep the tones fairly muted at this stage, to keep the painting as calm and subtle as possible…once this first painting pass is done I’ll work into the highlights and shadows and hopefully that’ll leave me with a nice looking still life that’s not quite as ‘in your face’ as some of the ones I’ve done in the past :)

VIDEO killed the radio star

Am experimenting with broadcasting live video while I paint today!!!...If I’m online you should be able to click the box on the right and see what I’m upto…If it doesn’t make my machine crash I’ll keep it :)

Frida on Fennel

I’m trying my hand at a new still life this week, three fennel bulbs on a stone shelf.

I’ve been looking at the work of Henk Helmantel and Andrew Hemingway, who are both masters of the genre and I fancied seeing if I could get anywhere close to what they can achieve…clearly I’m feeling overly cocky today :)…

I’ve been pushing the watercolours in an abstract direction, so fancied trying something ultra realistic for a change of pace and also wanted to play around with the oils again before getting back to the Jack in the Bath portrait…and I can’t help noticing that realistic still life work is… a: popular in galleries and b: fetches pretty good prices…So worth some further experiments I think…

Anyway we’ll see how it progresses…as you can see I have Frida watching over me in the studio…what an inspiring woman, I’m hoping some of her drive and determination will rub off on me…and it gives me someone to talk to while I’m painting :)