Searching - Finished

This is ‘Searching’ all finished. I’ve pushed this one in a slightly more graphical direction and I really like the way this is forming almost sculptural effects…

Searching - Carved

I’ve finished carving ‘Searching’ today and started painting the background…very fiddly painting in-between all those branches but I’m liking the overall direction thus far :) …Chilly in the studio this morning for the first time this year so I lit a fire…all seems to work well, I didn’t burn the place down and it was soon nice and toastie :)

The Walk - Finished

I finished carving and then painted ‘The Walk’ today, the actual colours are much warmer than this photo, but hopefully you get the idea :)

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…:)

more work in progress...

Gilded ‘The Walk’ today and drew a new piece called ‘Searching’…terrible photo I’m afraid, picture was still wet when I took it.

The House - Finished

Today I’ve finished painting ‘The House’. I’m really pleased with the way it’s turned out. I’ve painted over the gold with more control on this one and worked out a couple of extra ways of applying the shading which allow me to work in an extra layer of mark making. It’s only a small picture 6x8 inches but I think I’ve managed to get a lot of interesting elements in there…am looking forward to working these up on a larger scale…not looking forward to forking out for the gold to cover them however lol ;)

Some gold leaves...

I’ve roughed out the leaves on ‘Awake’ today, It’ll need a couple of weeks to dry before I can paint the leaf details and then another couple of weeks before I can add the shadows and sink some of them into the background. ‘Dreams’ is still wet on the gold, hopefully that’ll be dry enough to work on again next week, we’ll see :) I’m using a little oil in with the paint as I’m working up these effects and that coupled with the fact they’re over gold is extending the drying time. So, I think I’m going to want to get more pieces on the go simultaneously… I’ve added a photo of the drying/work in progress wall, the piece on the top left is the ‘Doves over Eynsham’ picture, which has now been resined, I foolishly added a couple of fingerprints as I was doing it, but this piece was always an experiment, so I’m not too bothered about that. The resin effect is wonderful, SUPER shiny…:)

Progress...

I made a little more progress on a couple of these pieces the other day. ‘Awake’ has been carved to sharpen up the gold lines. ‘The House’ has been gilded. Finally, I’ve started on the background for ‘Dreams_01’, it’ll need another coat to build up some of the darker areas and I’ve decided leave the figure in black and white rather than colour it, so that’ll need some tidying up and then it’ll be done. :)

Mad artist....

Mad artist finally locked behind bars…

Awake My Soul

‘Dreams 01’ needed a little more drying time today so I’ve started three new pieces.

‘The Walk’, ‘The House’ and ‘Awake My Soul’. Most of the day was spent drawing, but I managed to size and gild ‘Awake’, so I‘ve plenty of pieces at different stages to work on tomorrow :) ‘Awake’ is going to serve as a test piece for gold painted leaves, I want to do several pieces with forest elements so I’m going to experiment a bit on this piece to see what we can do :)

Blogger seems to being a bit of a pain today, so I’ve spread the images over three posts…

The House

Drawing stage...

The Walk

Drawing stage...

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 02

More work on the “Dreams 01” painting today, I’ve worked in more detail and contrast, there are still some highlights etc to go in, but it needs to dry for a while now :)

Dreams 01 - Under Painting Stage 01

I’ve been doing some work on this first painting from the “Jack and his friends” modelling session today. The aim is to fuse the recent gold experiments with a more ‘finished’ piece of painting. If it all works out I’ll be using the techniques I’m exploring here along with the first gold experiments (the man with a dog one in particular) to produce a series of paintings.
As you can see I’ve applied the gold and am currently working on the under painting. I’ve painted the mid tones and next I need to balance these as I start pushing the highlights and shadows to increase the contrast. As I do this I’ll begin to sharpen the details and then it’ll need to dry before the colour is glazed over the top…then I can start on the gold over painting :)
The painting is (currently) called “Dreams 01” and the model is Mary.

Postcards 2010

I’ve been away on holiday, hence the quiet in here lately. I took lots of photos while away, and only did a few postcards this year, sorry if you didn’t get one, but after walking all over Snowdon all I wanted was a G&T ;)