Double/Triple Pears - Finished

Here are the finished Floating Pear paintings. I’ve reworked the stone shelves and glazed the pears, adding in a little more shading than the original single pears, so these ones pop out from the canvas more. It’s amazing how you start seeing different relationships between the pears in these multiple ones, they seem to have taken on a life of their own :)

Double/Triple Pears – First colour pass

I did a first colour pass on the pears last week, haven’t had a chance to blog until now. They’ll need a little tweaking here and there before they’re ready for glazing, but all in all they’re coming along nicely :)

Single Pears all finished

Pear Floating Above Stone Shelf…numbers 1, 2 and 3… I know you’ve seen lots of these, but I thought I’d post the finished versions of them all anyway :)

Glazing Pears

Have been rather busy with some freelance work and making things for Christmas of late, so not much work to blog here I’m afraid. However, I finished off the single pears this afternoon so I thought I’d take a few photos of how I do the glazing stage.

Here I’ve got the four colours I want to glaze with and a small pot of oil. Each of the colours is transparent, not opaque (if it doesn’t tell you on the tube you can look up the brand you’re using on the internet, or it’ll usually tell you in an art materials catalogue). To start I’ve mixed each of the colours with a little of the oil…

Next I paint over the area I want to glaze with a thin layer of pure oil, this helps blending and gives you an even finish as you work.

Not brilliantly clear this photo (and sorry it’s a different pear…) but here I’ve just dabbed on the colours I want quite crudely, a spot here and there. Then using a clean dry brush you lightly pull the paint around on the surface, working around the spots of different colour you’ve added. Clean and dry the brush VERY frequently to avoid turning the colours to mud, but don’t be afraid of mixing them in certain areas. In the case of these pears taking the green into the red gave a lovely bruised effect on the skin.

A final pear with the glaze all blended together…In this instance I’m just using one layer of glazing, but you can use as many as you like. The only things to remember are…let each layer dry fully before painting the next, and use the paint thinly…the whole point is to trap the pigment within the oil and get a magical optical blending of colour…think of the way light travels through a piece of amber and aim for that :)

A Pears Progress…

A busy day today (actually, yesterday now…), I decided to do a little more work on the three single pears, just a couple of hours building up the colours further and adding some highlights, I want them to have a jewel like quality so I think this was time well spent…followed that with some work on a drawing I’m doing for a Christmas present (So you’ll have to wait to see that blogged)…Then moved onto the double/triple pears, added some initial modelling to the pears themselves and then started painting the shelves…2 meters of stone shelf edge takes a while to paint lol…

Three single pears

Second job of the day was the main painting on these single pear paintings…the bachelors of the pear world to follow the comments of the previous post ;)…all looking nice and glowing now. I’ll add a few highlights to the front of the shelf and then glaze the pears once they’ve dried.

Drawing up next set of pears

First painting job of the day done, I’ve finished drawing up the next set of pear paintings…onto the next stage of the single pears now…:)

Pears everywhere...

Well not quite the constant stream of posts I’d planned on today, took me a while to get starting and once things were finally progressing, I didn’t want to keep stopping to blog…so I just got on and painted…which is what I should be doing anyway :)

Started by glazing the original ‘pear on shelf painting’, you can’t really tell from this photo, but it’s got a lot more depth and life in the pear now, only took 10 minutes to do, but it’s really made a difference.

Then moved onto the three floating pears, did the underpainting on the pears as I developed the stone shelves then I’ve gazed a little colour over the pears to create the shadow colours (hence the pears look very dark here). Will let that dry over night and then start building up the forms and highlights properly.

I really like the floating element in these, it feels like they’re developing a very magical ingredient. :) Anyway, enough rabbiting on, off to do some work on the linocut.

Mirrors and wine...

I’m about half way across the lino block now, nothing wildly exciting to post, but I thought I’d take this snap to show the way I’m using a mirror as I’m carving. When I transferred the original design to the lino block it was reversed. By standing a mirror up and looking at my drawing in that, I can see exactly what I should be cutting. As this design is quite detailed this is proving essential, whenever I come to a fiddly bit, I’m checking the drawing in the mirror…then I take a sip of wine… ;)

Other news… Didn’t progress any further in the Little Xmas competition alas, but am looking forward to going to see the exhibition. Had a look around the gallery and studios when I dropped off the picture and both are lovely…would love a studio like one of those…:)…if you’re in that neck of the woods, go take a look…better yet, go and buy something…well done to the winners, very well deserved and a really excellent selection of work across the board :)

In theory tomorrow will be a “Pear” painting day…if so, I’ll post at various stages again so we can see how things develop….positively one hopes :)

And finally, I’m going to change the settings on this blog so you can comment without a Google account. Since installing the ‘Lijit Wijit’ I’ve been fascinated to see where all these people looking at the blog come from…so if you’ve been lurking there in the background, post a comment and say hi….that means you in particular Matthew ;)

Floating Pears - 3 paintings - Drawing stage

A variety of odd jobs to do today, the first of which was getting these ‘Floating Pears’ drawn up on canvases. They’re intended to all be individual pieces, but I’ve composed them so they work as a triptych as well…seemed like a good idea at the time.

Also, my Linocut ‘Floating’ (the couple in the boat) got into the Little Xmas Art Competition. You can see all the shortlisted artists on the OXART website. Sue Cook, Sue Templeman and Jane Tomlinson also got through the first round, so the Eynsham Art Group is very well represented. Good luck to all :)

Still Life Day - 4:00pm

One Pear on a Stone Shelf.

Okay I’m done on this for today. I may do a bit of glazing work on it in a week or so, once it’s dried a little…then again I may just leave it as it is…need to live with it for a day or two :)

I’d hoped the combination of bare canvas, exposed drawing and a bit of detailed work would give me something interesting and I think it has. With all the still live work I’ve done I’ve been trying to find a balance between the traditional and contemporary, this one feels like a good step :)

Still Life Day - 2:00pm

Some colour into the pear and more detail in the front of the stone shelf…

Still Life Day - 9:45am

Am doing a little experiment with still life today, want to see how far I can get in a single day…9:45 now, so enough blogging on with the painting…will post though the day as things progress…or not as the case may be :)