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…

Chapter 1 - part 3

Birthdays, sickly pets & broken cars got in the way of painting last week, so 12 hours in the studio today were most welcome. LOTS left to do to get the final two paintings done for August, it’s going to be a busy couple of weeks…First colour finished on ‘Chapter 1’ today and just starting on the second colour…Dr’s and Vet’s tomorrow, so a less than perfect start to the day, but the rest of the weekend is clear, so fingers crossed…

Lucian Freud died today aged 88…I’m not a fan of ‘modern’ Brit art…Hirst and Emin do very little for me…but Freud was a true master, a wonderful, honest painter, an inspiration, a thinker, a joy…

I Saw the Crescent - Finished

‘I Saw the Crescent’ all finished. The model is Emma.

Forbidden Fruit & Autumn

Doves over Eynsham 01

This is the first experiment from the studio, its acrylic and pencil on gesso board, I’ve sanded it back at various stages to build texture, added more gesso, drawn again and sanded again…generally I’ve had a good play :) I’ve built two more of these boards to experiment with…

Started on the box this evening...

The title says it all today :)

More work in progress

Birthday parties, allotment digging and visits to Art In Action all out of the way today, so I did some painting :) Tiger and 'man in box' shapes in. Need to do a bit on the box and the background and then I can start building up the paint.

and then there was a rhino...

Got some paint onto the rhino figure this afternoon. Re-drew him quite a bit while I was at it...the hybrid human/animal look is working well I think and I'm starting to see some of those interesting lines I get so excited about, so all in all a positive session :)

Finally got some paint on...

Have been working on this over the last week, just drawing the design out, changing a few bits here and there as it develops... Pencil on black canvas doesn’t really show up very well in a photo, so I haven’t bothered posting anything until now…today I’ve started adding some paint as you can see :). This is the ‘Ape’ character sat atop the box… the big cat has now become a tiger…I like the idea of using the stripes to echo some of the spiky shapes in the foreground. I’ve marked out the main line of the tigers spine in the background, but I’ll leave drawing him fully until there’s a bit more paint on and the shapes become clearer…The way the figure in the box is drawn is now totally different and I’m really pleased with the way he’s developing (though you can’t see him very clearly yet…:))

Black and Red Ideas

Thought I’d post a few scribbles I’ve done while thinking about the next picture I’m going to do…currently called ‘Black and Red’. I’ll leave you to see if you can interpret anything from these…they are quite messy, but that’s the way I do things…I don’t think I’m going to explain what it’s all about, a painting should be able to stand on its own two feet, rather than need a written dissertation…

I had the idea about a year ago and I’ve been looking at ‘Study after Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X’ by Francis Bacon and ‘Guernica’ by Pablo Picasso for…emotional inspiration…So it’s going to be pretty dark :)

Golden Key - Finished

Came down with a bout of man flu this weekend, so didn’t get much painting done, however I’ve finished this one off today. I’ll put it in the Eynsham Art Group Summer Exhibition 5^th – 13^th July, should you want to go see it…or better still, go and buy it ;)

I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. As with the watercolours, I think the techniques I’ve used here are giving me an interesting, unique vein to explore further…will get another canvas gesso’d up this week ready to go…:)

(Have attached a couple of close-ups for anyone that wants to view the mysterious lines in more detail ;))

Nearly there...

Day 4. and I’ve done a lot on this today, nearly finished in fact…:)

More shapes...

Day three and I’ve added some more detail to the background.

I spent a LONG time just looking at this today…there are some elements that I like (overall composition, sky, pose of the figure, sections of the outlines), but the general application of the paint is not yet working…it’s too like a lino cut and not enough like a painting…this is partly due to the nature of acrylic paint and my love/hate relationship with its properties(or lack of skill in using it), but mainly due to the fact that this is an experiment and I don’t know exactly where I’m going…

I need to find a way to blend the acrylics, that gives me a ‘painterly’ look, without having that ‘messy’ look that you can get from acrylics when sections are drying before you’ve had a chance to work them…the current blocks of colour are too lino cut ish….too like a cartoon…

Phase 2

Day two of experimentation and some of the lines are starting to come together nicely. I’m painting the background spaces rather than drawing the actual lines, which is giving me some interesting details along the lines which I really like…the effect is a little bit like a lino cut…anyway, there’s a bit more blocking in of colour to go yet, then I’m going to work the lines themselves, pulling out a few details here and there while tiding up balancing the weight of the lines…Once that’s done I’ll start working on the internal painting…all in all, I’m please with the way this is going, I’m certainly picking up some useful tips :)

Experimentation part 1

I’m doing a bit of experimentation this week. It’s an acrylic, playing with lines, figures and storytelling, based on a very short story called The Golden Key by the Brothers Grimm.

For quite a while now I’ve wanted to take the strong lines used in the watercolours and get them onto canvas in some form. I’ve considered several different methods, some very similar to the watercolours themselves, but part of my desire to use canvas/oil/acrylic is to gain more control over the lines in order to depict figures... The looseness of the watercolour method just doesn’t allow me to achieve that. However, I want to retain the spontaneity that I’ve been getting in the watercolours, which is something that is sometimes missing from some of my ‘traditional’ oils…

So this is it, phase one, blocking in the composition. I’m not entirely sure how it’s going to develop…we’ll see as the week progresses…:)

Thursdays efforts

Here's todays work on the portrait. Added lots more modelling in the faces, did a bit of work on the clothes, changed the background...basically added more paint to everything :) still needs more, I haven't got the balance of skin tones quite right yet, but it's going in the right direction. As the paint has built up I've been able to used some stronger brushstrokes, these are starting to come together nicely. The new background works much better, the previous green one was too strong, the painting is quite 'in your face' with the style of skin tone and brushstrokes and the green was just fighting too much. I've also worked a bit of framing into the background with a roughly painted black border, it's a minor graphical element but adds a nice little touch I think. All in all this is turning out to be a very useful experiment.

blocking in....

Blocking in a bit more form tonight...some bits going well...some bits need more work...but generally a reasonable evenings work. I'm trying to pull the likenesses together as I go and they're certainly better today....

Acrylic Portrait part 2

Did a bit on this acrylic portrait the other day. Sploshing in the colours and playing with the brushstrokes atm...I've lost a bit of the likenesses while doing this, but the whole point of this particular painting was to experiment and see what happens, so I'm not going to worry about that, will just keep on playing until it looks okay :)

Acrylic portrait

Started on a double portrait in acrylics today. Not sure how well this is going to work as I tend to like the time oils give me to push the paint around...am going to go about this acrylic in a different way, no under painting as such, but I've blocked in the base colours today and will probably keep adding new blocks of colour as I go...all a bit of an experiment really :)