some mid tones...

Building up the mid tones today…

Dark to Light

I’ve been working on the painting of Chloe & Ruby today, I’m working from dark to light, nearly finished the shadowed areas, more tomorrow…

studio stuff

Last week was all about the framing side of things. Went out and bought the remaining kit I need and then build a great big framing bench…all done now, so I will be back to some actual painting this week I promise ;)

Chloe & Ruby (Matthew & Meagan)

Drawn out Chloe & Ruby & now working on thickening the lines and filling in the darker areas on this one and the one of Matthew & Meagan, more work to do on both…

A new toy...

No painting today as I’ve been reorganising the area at the back of the studio to make space for this new beast…a framing guillotine, super clean joints and super heavy to move about… all done now though, so proper work tomorrow :)

My furry assistant…

I've finished the ‘surprise’ commission this week, so everything will be blogable next week.

Chloe and Ruby were in modelling for their portraits yesterday and as you can see from the photo, Bryn was a great help… Also did a little work on Matthew & Meagans painting, finished drawing the hands and started building up some of the main outlines…more on that next week…:)

Matthew & Meagan - Part 1

Well August was a quiet month on the blog wasn’t it. Holidays & decorating took up most of the month, but I’ve also been pausing a bit while I wait for some feedback from Meller about the paintings. I think they’ll be moving from Witney to Oxford for a little bit during September, so if you haven’t had a chance to take a look at them yet, that’ll be the place to go, again, give Ewan a call first to check their whereabouts :)

I’ve got a few portraits to work on this month, I should be able to post progress on a couple of them as I go. The other has been commissioned as a surprise for a birthday, so that’ll have to remain hidden for a while :)

This is the first, a double portrait of Mr & Mrs Rice (or my little brother and his gorgeous wife Meagan, if you prefer). I’m going to do this in a slightly different style to the recent paintings, I want to paint the clothes more fully, rather than in the ‘printed’ style I’ve been using, still monochromatic, but more realistically done. Also, I ‘think’ I’m going to leave the Gold off this one & I’m going to varnish it with a regular gloss varnish, rather than the spray matt varnish that I used on the other paintings. Anyway, this is most of the drawing stage done on the figures, just the ‘ring’ hands to go in :)