Study of Katie

This is a study of Katie who came in to do some modelling for me the other day. I’m hoping to get several people in to do some modelling for me early in the New Year and then start developing some more complex oil paintings…I’m looking forward to that :)

Work in progress

When not spinning around and falling over following some foul bug I picked up off Jack this week, I managed to get a bit of work done on these two paintings. Underpainting finished on ‘Conversations’ and I’ve started on the background painting on ‘Happy Jack’.

Just one more week to go in the exhibition, so if you haven’t managed to get along yet, you’ve only got next Thursday, Friday and Saturday…:)

Moonlit Square - Finished

Well today has been another busy day over at the exhibition with visitors particularly enjoying the gold paintings and the hot tea on such a cold day :)
Thursday and Friday were a bit quieter which allowed me to make some progress with the ‘Moonlit Square’ watercolour and I’ve finished it off today, hope you like it :)

Pick of the week

Here are a couple of photos of the exhibition before people started arriving and a copy of a lovely write-up that appeared in today’s Oxford Times (Link to electronic version here). The opening went very well, with lots of visitors all enjoying themselves and the paintings.

My Paparazzi friend Neil took lots of photos, so hopefully I’ll have a few of those to post soon too :)

We opened again today and had several visitors in, so hopefully with the article in the paper Saturday will be busy once again. :)

The exhibition is open every Thursday, Friday and Saturday up to and including Saturday 18th December…

Hope you can come along :)

A Winter Wonderland of Art in the Woods

A Winter Wonderland of Art in the Woods

Oxfordshire artist Graham Rice will be holding a Winter Exhibition at Cuckoo Lane Art Studios from November 27th to December 18th.

This will be Graham's first exhibition since opening his Studio and Gallery at Cuckoo Lane earlier this year. It offers visitors a chance to see his latest swirling watercolours, including a number of new local scenes, along with a contemporary series of oil paintings which combine Gold and Silver leaf with traditional oil painting techniques to produce works that sparkle with life.

Alongside the Gallery is Graham’s charming Studio, which gives the opportunity to see just how his artwork is created. All manner of artistic equipment is on display and the artist is happy to explain how they are used to develop his diverse pieces of artwork.

If all this creativity inspires you to want to have a go yourself, you can sign up for one of the many art workshops that are currently being held at Cuckoo Lane Art Studios, including an ‘Introduction to Linocuts’ being run by Graham himself.

The Winter Exhibition is on from Saturday 27th November to Saturday 18th December at Graham’s Studio & Gallery, Cuckoo Lane Art Studios, Eynsham Park Estate, Cuckoo Lane, North Leigh, Witney, OX29 6PW. Open hours are Thursday, Friday & Saturdays 10 – 6.

Moonlit Square Eynsham - Drawing

I’ve started on a new watercolour of the square in Eynsham today. Just at the drawing stage at the moment, but it’s going to be a night time scene, hopefully with some interesting lighting coming from the doorways of the church and Bartholomew Rooms.
Posters for the Winter Exhibition starting to go up today (16 days to go…) and website beginning it’s overhaul, so all in all a busy day :)

St Peter's Church Eynsham - Finished

Finished this autumnal view of St Peter's today for the Winter Eynsham Arts Group exhibition.

The Stag and the Moon - Finished

Here’s a final print of ‘The Stag and the Moon’ and a drawing stage photo of a new watercolour ‘St Peter’s Church Eynsham’.
I’ve used silver and aluminium leaf on the stag prints which was an interesting experience…printing with gilding size is a sticky business…:)

Started a couple of new pieces

I started painting the background on 'Pastures new' the other day but forgot to seal the gold first, so I need to wait for the oil to dry before I can move forward with that one. I’ve started a couple of other new pieces this week ‘Conversations’ and ‘One of us is going in the wrong direction’, just starting on the underpainting on both of those, but thought I’d post them anyway :)

I’m going to have an exhibition over at the gallery from 27th Nov to 18th Dec so they’ll be lots of work to do between now and then, hopefully finishing some of these new gold pieces as well as some new watercolour swirls…fingers crossed :)

Lino Cutting Class

I taught the first of the ‘Introduction to Lino Cutting’ classes last Friday, all went very well with everyone enjoying themselves and producing some wonderful prints. The next class is on Friday November 19th, if you’re interested in coming along more details can be found HERE :)

The Stag and The Moon - Outline Print

I’ve been doing some work on one of the ‘Stag’ linocuts today. Here you can see where I’ve refined the lines of the drawing, transferred it onto the block, carved the block and finally a test print. There’ll be another block for the background colour, more of that later :)

Pastures New - Just started

I’ve started a new piece today called ‘Pastures New’. As you can see I’ve done the under painting for the ‘figures’ and gilded the relevant areas. I’m planning on doing a more complex sky on this one too.

I’m teaching a lino cutting class starting next Friday, so I’m planning on doing some work on the stag linocuts tomorrow...as well as building some cutting boards… If you’re interested in future classes have a look HERE for further information :)

Dreams 01 - Finished

I’ve finished ‘Dreams 01’, just working over the flesh, sharpening things up, adding more contrast etc. I’m really glad I settled on keeping it grey rather than flesh coloured I don’t think it would be half as interesting if I hadn’t done it this way.
I’ve also started a new piece today of two sheep…I’ve sealed the drawing with acrylic, so you can’t really see it that clearly in a photo, so I haven’t bothered posting it yet. I’m going to paint the sheep in grey, the sky in blue and everything else in gold, so it’ll be another experiment to see how far I can push things but it feels like I’m getting close to a style I can run with now :)
Once again many thanks to Mary for posing for the ‘Dreams’ painting, and Jack and Mary for ‘Awake’ hope you like them…more to follow :)

Happy Jack - Underpainting and Gilding

I started a new piece today, ‘Happy Jack’. This one is a bit of an experiment to see how small I can paint a full figure, I want to get on and paint the more complex ‘woodland’ paintings soon and I need to keep the scale of those under control. Partly due to the time involved, but also the cost of the gold I’ll need…so the smaller I can do a figure, in some ways, the better.
I’ve done the under painting using acrylic on this as it’ll dry nice and quickly and I find it a little easier to control at this stage, I’ve also gilded the background using silver on this one. I’m leaving the slight gaps between the sheets of silver as I quite like the effect and I think/hope it’ll leave an interesting texture once I’ve painted over the top.
The gilding will need a few days to dry so I’ll try and finish the ‘Dreaming’ painting tomorrow…
As you can see the winter winds have started to blow so the fire has been lit and Bryn in making the most of it :)

Awake My Soul - Finished

Finished ‘Awake My Soul’ today. Hope you like it :)

Awake - textures

I’ve added most of the texturing to ‘Awake’ now. The next step will be to add more contrast to the shading, working some depth into the leaves and darkening the background.

Stags - Design

Here are some designs for new linocuts I’m going to do. They all need a little more refining before I transfer them on to the lino blocks but I thought I’d post them at this stage so you can see how the ideas develop. I want to get the design of the stag the same on each block and I did ‘The White Stag’ first so that one needs the most work to pull him into line with the others. I’m going to try and print one of the colours on these prints using silver…which should be an interesting experiment :)

On a related note, I’m teaching a couple of ‘Introduction to Lino cutting’ classes. If you’re interested, further information can be found HERE :)

Meller Merceux Gallery

‘One and Three Quarter Pears’ is currently in the front window of the Meller Merceux Gallery in Oxford. If you happen to be wandering in that direction, pop in for a look :)

Searching - Finished

This is ‘Searching’ all finished. I’ve pushed this one in a slightly more graphical direction and I really like the way this is forming almost sculptural effects…

Searching - Carved

I’ve finished carving ‘Searching’ today and started painting the background…very fiddly painting in-between all those branches but I’m liking the overall direction thus far :) …Chilly in the studio this morning for the first time this year so I lit a fire…all seems to work well, I didn’t burn the place down and it was soon nice and toastie :)

The Walk - Finished

I finished carving and then painted ‘The Walk’ today, the actual colours are much warmer than this photo, but hopefully you get the idea :)

Sleepy...

I’ve gilded ‘Searching’ today and done most of the carving on ‘The walk’.

‘Searching’ has been gilded using transfer, rather than loose leaf gold…exactly the same gold, but a different method to apply it. It’s the first time I’ve used transfer and I’d have to say it’s not as much fun to apply…for some strange reason I seem to enjoy the tricky(ish) process of using the loose leaf…I’ll use the transfer for solid areas and loose for smaller details in future I think.

Bryn is now allowed out for walks, so we’ve had a few strolls today while waiting for size to dry…as you can see, he’s exhausted from all the excitement…:)

more work in progress...

Gilded ‘The Walk’ today and drew a new piece called ‘Searching’…terrible photo I’m afraid, picture was still wet when I took it.

The House - Finished

Today I’ve finished painting ‘The House’. I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. I’ve painted over the gold with more control on this one and worked out a couple of extra ways of applying the shading which allow me to work in an extra layer of mark making. It’s only a small picture 6x8 inches but I think I’ve managed to get a lot of interesting elements in there…am looking forward to working these up on a larger scale…not looking forward to forking out for the gold to cover them however lol ;)

Some gold leaves...

I’ve roughed out the leaves on ‘Awake’ today, It’ll need a couple of weeks to dry before I can paint the leaf details and then another couple of weeks before I can add the shadows and sink some of them into the background. ‘Dreams’ is still wet on the gold, hopefully that’ll be dry enough to work on again next week, we’ll see :) I’m using a little oil in with the paint as I’m working up these effects and that coupled with the fact they’re over gold is extending the drying time. So, I think I’m going to want to get more pieces on the go simultaneously… I’ve added a photo of the drying/work in progress wall, the piece on the top left is the ‘Doves over Eynsham’ picture, which has now been resined, I foolishly added a couple of fingerprints as I was doing it, but this piece was always an experiment, so I’m not too bothered about that. The resin effect is wonderful, SUPER shiny…:)

Progress...

I made a little more progress on a couple of these pieces the other day. ‘Awake’ has been carved to sharpen up the gold lines. ‘The House’ has been gilded. Finally, I’ve started on the background for ‘Dreams_01’, it’ll need another coat to build up some of the darker areas and I’ve decided leave the figure in black and white rather than colour it, so that’ll need some tidying up and then it’ll be done. :)

Mad artist....

Mad artist finally locked behind bars…

Awake My Soul

‘Dreams 01’ needed a little more drying time today so I’ve started three new pieces.

‘The Walk’, ‘The House’ and ‘Awake My Soul’. Most of the day was spent drawing, but I managed to size and gild ‘Awake’, so I‘ve plenty of pieces at different stages to work on tomorrow :) ‘Awake’ is going to serve as a test piece for gold painted leaves, I want to do several pieces with forest elements so I’m going to experiment a bit on this piece to see what we can do :)

Blogger seems to being a bit of a pain today, so I’ve spread the images over three posts…

The House

Drawing stage...

The Walk

Drawing stage...

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 02

More work on the “Dreams 01” painting today, I’ve worked in more detail and contrast, there are still some highlights etc to go in, but it needs to dry for a while now :)

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 01

I’ve been doing some work on this first painting from the “Jack and his friends” modelling session today. The aim is to fuse the recent gold experiments with a more ‘finished’ piece of painting. If it all works out I’ll be using the techniques I’m exploring here along with the first gold experiments (the man with a dog one in particular) to produce a series of paintings.
As you can see I’ve applied the gold and am currently working on the under painting. I’ve painted the mid tones and next I need to balance these as I start pushing the highlights and shadows to increase the contrast. As I do this I’ll begin to sharpen the details and then it’ll need to dry before the colour is glazed over the top…then I can start on the gold over painting :)
The painting is (currently) called “Dreams 01” and the model is Mary.

Postcards 2010

I’ve been away on holiday, hence the quiet in here lately. I took lots of photos while away, and only did a few postcards this year, sorry if you didn’t get one, but after walking all over Snowdon all I wanted was a G&T ;)