Woodstock at night

I've painted this one for a competition in Woodstock which has the theme of 'Illumination'...Hence a view of Woodstock, at night, lit by the moon and windows. It's taken AGES to paint :) (Well, about 13 hours...) balancing the flowing, swirly lines with reasonably accurately rendered buildings was...a challenge...lots of drawing to start with and then lots of masking fluid...and then lots of water in with the paint...in lots of layers...hence, I've been working on this all day...However, I'm quite pleased with the results, it's got the kind of look I had in my head...anyway, It's entered into the competition, so we'll see how it does...off to sleep now...very tired :)

Land of the Sheep...

A proud and noble sheep...:)

If you zoom in you should be able to see that I've softened some of the lines by painting into them once the masking fluid has been removed. On some of the stones at the base of the picture I've done this in such a way that they still have a white highlight on the top. This has given them an interesting 3D feel...something to explore further at some point :)

Llyn Llydaw - The Miners' Track - Snowdonia

Allotmenting yesterday, but pulled my finger out and painted today...(after painting the raised bed I built yesterday...but that wasn't my best work, so I won't bother blogging it :)) ... This is Llyn Llydaw, one of the lakes on the Miners track on the way up Snowdon. Initially I'd drawn the mountains in the background, but I decided to extend them up a bit and do away with the sky altogether...I think this maybe the first time I've painted a landscape without a sky...anyway I liked the way the light hit the hills and wanted a darker background...so up went the mountains :)...I've actually painted them in a slightly different way...laying on lots of colour and then lifting off the markings on the cliff. I'm quite pleased with the way thats worked out, the slight blur gives a sense of depth and adds a nice contrast to the sharp lines of the masking fluid...all in all, not too bad :)

A quick update on the oil experiment...oil is still wet...I may have to rethink this ;)

Two Farmhouses in Wales

I've been somewhat distracted with summer holidays, allotment building and general sloth like behaviour over the last couple of months...time to get on with things! I've got my oil experiments and the acrylic pictures to continue with but I need my main focus to be these swirling watercolours...I want to have 20 good ones to take to galleries next year and that means I need to crack on...17 weeks until the end of the year, so I need to aim for a couple of paintings a week, which is perfectly doable...if I focus ;)

Anyway I think I'm going to add this one to the good pile as I'm really pleased with the way it's turned out. I used some new tubes of watercolour for this one. I'm increasingly finding I prefer tubes to pans as I can get more pigment on quicker, hence the colours on this are a bit more intense and there is a bit more time to play with the paint while its wet on the paper.

So one done this week...need to do better next week :)

Oil Swirls Experiment

I'm trying a little experiment at the moment to see if i can use oils with the swirling landscapes...I've got a canvas and a board I've coated with Gesso. Both are divided into two and I've used masking fluid on one half, moulding latex on the other, I've made a variety of marks with both and then painting on some oil. Thin to thick across the surface. I need to wait for it to dry now, then I'll add another coat... then I'll need to wait a LONG time for it to dry fully....and finally, we'll see if the masking fluid/latex comes off or not :)

Also did a painting yesterday which I'll blog later...need to head off now and am late already :)