Nearly there...

Floor down, shelves in place, most of the tops on, hopefully next weekend it’ll all be done :)

Tired Dog...

Things are starting to take shape now & Bryn is exhausted…

Paintings all done...

Painting commissions all done and delivered this week, so it’s back to converting the main room into ‘The Cuckoo’s Nest’… lots to do and not enough room to swing a dog at the moment :)

Graham's Dog Kennels...

The main pass on the faces is now done & I’ve started on the clothing, this is going to be painted more fully than the recent paintings and will (fingers crossed) be the style of the next set of paintings…and as you can see from the other photo, if the painting doesn’t work out, I can always open a kennel ;)

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…:)

Whispering to the wind I - part 1

Bryn 'admiring' the start of a new piece. Whispering to the wind I. The model is Aimee and there's lots more to do :-)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

April...

A new month and another new piece started, Bryn doesn't look to impressed so far but this is just the first layer of the background, eventually its going to be another portrait of Katie, but as you can see, much larger this time. Have also been working on snow white, the areas painted Orange will be gilded with gold. Most of the drawing is now done on this, still need to do the man in the moon though. I took the green painting of Katie up to the RA yesterday, so we'll see what happens this year ;-)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8

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 :)

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…:)