paintings prints and stuff

Blue, Viridian,Rose, Lemon and Bronze,  16 ins square on paper This one is based loosely on previous colour pencil still life experiments shown here on the blog earlier - but bigger and bolder and using water based media. I didn't want to do a traditional set up so the elements are moved around, abstracted a little, colours intensified and the division between pattern and reality blurred. The original coloured pencil sketches are here ,  here ,  here , here  , here , here and here . What do you think?  

I'm taking part in an exhibition at the weekend with friends - we meet up once a month to critique work in progress and generaly discuss art matters, exhibitions and arrange to go out to exhibitions or sketch and a couple of times a year we put on a a show like this. Link to our website This is in Leicestershire, a few miles north of Leicester - if anyone is in the area, do pop in.  

The little acer in my garden, glowing in the sun this morning, with Virginia creeping turning crimson in the background. I need to get the paints out :>)

a detail from another image in the secret project - a 6 inch section of an A2 piece - to be explained later

Friends came up with this caption for this one - what do you think?  Maybe you have to be a 'certain' age to remember chips wrapped in newspaper! Or Cod and chips they said .... not cat n' chips and this was an alternative Robyn suggested for yesterdays picture - snappier? what do you think?  any other ideas? and then there is this image that needs a caption  AND .......   Those of you who follow our group blog Watermarks may remember us starting up.   I had the initial idea but the other founder members were brilliant at getting it up and running. We initially kept it very small but with committments and other artistic subjects, it has slowed down a little.   We've decided to open up to a few more people who particularly enjoy painting water in all its incarnations - all those delicious reflections, waves, eddies ....... If you are interested in joining us leave a message on the blog or send an email to our address (on the Watermarks blog) and we'

Playing with ideas for a card competition - This is madame when she was young, playing in a waste paper basket.   I'm looking at the photo part of the competition as the artwork side is very very simplistic and graphic and not 'me'. The font needs playing with and making more interesting I know - that's just to get the idea down. Captions aren't easy!   any thoughts?

A quick glimpse of secret project - to prove I'm working!

Playing with colour added to the previous sketch in Photoshop Just playing, adding colour, experimenting with the computer.

A quick charcoal sketch done as a demo, A4 I've been working on a secret project and postcards that can't be shown until they are received - so I thought I'd include this quick charcoal sketch, done as a demo in class, from a photograph a student had taken. It's of Bradgate Park - where Lady Jane Grey, she of the 9 days Queen fame lived, before she was beheaded. Done to show the lovely painterly looseness  of willow charcoal and the speed it's possible to work with it - lovely lovely stuff, even if messy : >) Other posts about Bradgate Park: Autumn Woods

Another very very rough sketch for Lucy's book Another very rough sketch. Lots of words added to the list of possibilities but any ideas welcome as nothing is fixed yet - everything is a the very fluid, sketching out and thinking through stage, With other books that I did for Sam they were around a theme - him on holiday or playing football etc - this one is a bit different and so I'm needing to plan how I put it together a little more.