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…:)