Oxford Art Society Open Exhibition 2009

The Boscastle painting above is in the Oxford Art Society Open exhibition at the Said Business School at the moment, The exhibition continues until 31st Oct, check the website for opening times – Oxford Art Society. Susan also has a picture selected, one of her shoe paintings, so it's well worth a visit.

If you can't make it into Oxford for that show, don't forget there's a selection of my work at the Meller Merceux gallery in Witney at the moment :)

Things are getting busy...:)

View from The Talbot Inn - Finished

View from the Talbot Inn, all finished…Just about managed to work through my hangover today…going to lie down now…lol

View from The Talbot Inn - Part 2

A bit of work in progress today, I’ve got the masking fluid on and am just starting to apply some colour. I’ll work over the whole image like this, adding the basic colours and some texture and lines. Then I’ll do a ‘final’ pass, intensifying some colours, knocking some back, adding a few shadows and any extra lines and splatters as needed. Then the masking fluid comes off and depending on the look of things at that point, it’ll either be finished or I’ll work into the lines a little. Anyway, so far so good :)

On another note here’ a link to a culture show special about the summer exhibition, interesting to see what gets in…and now I know we need to look for the letter ‘D’ on the back of Susans picture to know if it did get through the first round…I’ll buy you a pint if it did ;)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00l9dmr/The_Culture_Show_2008_2009_17_06_2009/

View from The Talbot Inn - Part 1

I’ve drawn this very faintly with a 2H pencil, so the drawings not that clear when photographed, but I thought I’d blog it anyway. It’s a view from the decking at the Talbot Inn in Eynsham.

Following on from the last painting of the Square and some discussions in the pub with Lorna and Susan, I’m pushing the perspective quite a bit further in this one. It’s taken the best part of a day to get it all worked out…it’s SO much easier doing something realistic lol…as soon as you pull the angles around in one area you need to balance them elsewhere…lots of rubbing out and refining things but I’m finally happy with the layout…need to add about a gallon of masking fluid now ;)

Eynsham Square 3.25 June 1st

Finished off this one of the square today. Titled “Eynsham Square 3.25 June 1st”…for want of a better title ;)

Eynsham Square part 1

Starting on another swirling painting of the square for the art group summer exhibition in the village. Got the drawing done the other day, so I thought I’d post it at this halfway stage…depending on the weather I may get the painting done tomorrow…watch this space ;)

Boscastle

Did this one of Boscastle in Cornwall while I was down there last week. Lots more lines and drawing in this than normal so it took a lot longer to do…also hadn’t done one in a while, so it took a bit of time to get back into the swing of things. I took LOADS of photos while I was down there so should get a couple more done over the coming weeks…though really must try and get another Eynsham one or two done for the next exhibition in the village…

Eynsham Toll Bridge

Three weeks since the last post…shameful…I’m going to put it down to good weather and too much time on the allotment…anyway, back to ‘normal’ service now hopefully.

This is the Toll Bridge in Eynsham (I’m not copying you honestly Lorna :)) Drew this out yesterday, painted the sky last night when I got in from the pub…and finished the rest of it off today. I’ve tried to paint the bridge in one sweeping motion and made some masks for the trees before painting the masking fluid on…I don’t think the effect is very clear in this painting, but it’s certainly a technique I shall try again…:)

A couple of quick updates…

The Woodstock picture got into the competition, so it’ll be on show at The Henmans Garden Gallery, The Oxfordshire Museum, during Art in Woodstock (25th - 2nd November)…competition winners are announced on 2nd November, so we’ll see if it gets any further…:)

Oil painting experiment is STILL wet, so I think we can officially say that masking fluid and oil paint do not make happy bedfellows…a new experiment for ‘swirly’ oil paints is penciled in for New Year…:)

The Hills are Alive...

Woodstock Church seen from over the lake in the grounds of Blenheim Palace.

Blenheim 07

Column of Victory, seen over the water, Blenheim number 07. I’ve two more Blenheim sketches in my little book, so perhaps I’ll get those done over the weekend. Then there are a couple of Burford sketches, with lots of curvy flowing buildings and giant lollypop trees, then a Cornish sea view waiting to be done…I should stop typing and get a move on :)

Can't think of a title, but here's a picture :)

Painting days are a bit all over the place this week, but here’s today’s effort. This is the barn on the right hand side of the road as you drive towards Burford. It looks like builders are about to move in and turn it into a house, so I thought I’d have a go at it before it changed or got hidden from view.

Am really pleased with the way the watercolours are going at the moment, the uniqueness of the style is getting stronger and I’m increasingly pushing the painting further away from the source material…well that’s the aim anyway :)

Sheep...

Blenheim 04...now with added Sheep!...

Straight(ish) edges

Blenheim 03…playing around with some square shapes and straight edges in this one…trying to balance the presence of the building in the background.

It's a Miracle...

Miracles will never cease…I actually did some painting today! NOTHING done in April…will hang my head in shame. Still, today is the 1^st of May and here is a new Blenheim watercolour, number 2….lets see how much inspiration strikes this month :)

Trip to Cornwall

Have just got back from an Easter break in Cornwall, got a couple of watercolours done while I was down there. The first is Rocky Valley near Boscastle and the second Rough Tor up on Bodmin. I was playing around with lifting more colour off to get the stone textures working... and generally glazing the colours on a bit more than I usually do and I'm quite pleased with the results on both pictures. Both paintings are a little bigger than the ones I've done before, which also helped... So all in all a successful trip :)

I've also been taking a few photos for some future oils, more on those to come soon :)

Welcome to 2007

Well, we're just back from the festive break, managed to get a couple of watercolours done while we were away. Here's a few work in progress shots of one of them, just took these with my phone, so the qualities not that great. I'll try and get a couple of better shots of the finished paintings done over the weekend.

So, with my desire to get a bit more done this year, I thought I'd start 2007 with a nice challenging project...I'm going to enter the BP Portrait Award...There, now I've written that up here, I guess I'll just have to pull my finger out and actually get painting...This has always been one of my favourite exhibitions, the quality of the work is superb and very varied...IF I ever managed to get a picture in, it would be a great accomplishment... I have entered once before (with my painting of Neil and Chloe) , alas that picture didn't make it into the exhibition. The rejection (and expense) of not being selected for any exhibition is always disappointing, but, "no pain, no gain" as they say... And the quality of some of the other work that didn't make it was very high...So you can be rejected and still be in good company :)

Anyway, I've always wanted to get a painting into this exhibition... I thought I was running out of time. It only used to be open to artists under 40 yrs old... And time is ticking by... But luckily they appear to have changed the rules this year and opened it up to artists of all ages, so with luck I'll get a few more cracks at it.

Unfortunately the picture I was going to enter (The portrait of Jack from the last post) is too small for the competition, paintings must be at least 8" x 10". So I need to get something new painted before the March 4th deadline.

I've decided to paint another of Jack (He's a cheap, obedient model, with his fathers good looks...;). I've always fancied using the mosaic tiles in our bathroom as a backdrop. So the plan is to have Jack sat in the bath, looking every bit the sullen 11 year old, while a number of hands enter the frame offering him soap, flannels etc...which he's duly rejecting...Perhaps the title will be "Trying to teaching my son that soap is his friend..." or something like that...

I'm going to start making some sketches and taking a few photos over the next couple of days, so hopefully I'll get the first of the sketches up here over the weekend...I don't think he'd thank me for posting any reference photos, so you'll have to make do without those :)

A couple of images

Here are a couple of the watercolours I've done this year. Both were painted on the Herbridean Isle of Eigg. (Learn more about Eigg here )
The first is a view of Rum. Painted from the Bay of Laig on Eigg...I painted all these Eigg pictures by resting a board on whatever was around - in this case, a sand dune. I've found this forced me to views that weren't necessarily the most obvious ones... with all the watercolours I've done recently, I've just wanted to paint in a very pure way...not getting caught up in subject or composition too much,simply enjoying painting whatever was in front of me. The downside to propping a board on whatever's around, is that it can be very uncomfortable on the back...so I'm using an easel more often now...still, it's something I'd recommend doing every now and then as a good exercise.

This second image is of the Sgurr, as seen from Kildonnan, where we were staying (Highly recommended! say hi to Marie if you go).

The swirling lines within both these pictures have developed over the past 18 months or so. I like the way they define the shapes, while adding a slightly abstract/impressionistic/fun element to the pictures. I've taken this a bit further by using masking fluid in a couple of pictures, this gives an interesting effect, but the fluid doesn't flow like paint, so gives a more chunky effect...interesting when washed over though...I'll post those ones soon...Wow, two posts in two days, it'll never last...;)