paintings prints and stuff

    Of Flowers.  Mixed media on canvas. The image below is a part of avariation on this canvas which you can read about here - each version exploits the mark making potential of the medium used.  The flower is purely imaginary and abstracted.  It's about flowers rather than being a flower.  I was asked to do a commission with abstracted flowers and this is a fragment ....   Fragment of a commisssion, using Derwent Inktense I can't show it yet.  All will be revealed later, when the website it and another image, are done for is up and running :>) now to look at paperwork : >(  and hopefully paint some more ....

Ragged feather in mixed media A ragged feather in a mix of watercolour, coloured pencil, Derwent tinted graphite pencils and biro. I can't show the work I've been busy with yet.   And paperwork and marking has been taking up a lot of time too.   So many plans and ideas and so little time and energy!

  Cat carving and cardoon by lamplight, coloured pencil in A3 moleskine Still looking at the items on the shelf above the tv but moving them around on paper, rearranging and looking at pattern and colour.  They aren't in the positions I've drawn them in at all and I've simply used the colour of the vase, though lightening it, not wanting the vase itself explained.  The same with the wheat and hearts patterns.  Warm light from the lamp and the cool lavender shades are observed so that the whole thing hangs together. Below are the earlier stages as it evolved.  I only have a rough idea of the final piece when doing this, unlike a traditional set up, where everything is where it will be in the image.   It evolves as I go.  Major elements like the cat carving, cardoon, blue of the vase and the honesty are decided immediately - they are the skeleton that everything hangs on.   Decisions about depth of tone, lost edges, patterns...

Study for a larger work, coloured pencil in A4 moleskine, honesty It's cold, very very windy and raining cats and dogs.   I'm lucky that we aren't affected by the terrible floods affecting large areas of the county but I still don't want to go out in it!  So I'm continuing to look at still life, a subject that I rarely do as a finished painting, preferring to do occasional studies of things that interest me and concentrating mainly on landscape. The items on the shelf over the tv, lit by a table lamp caught my eye - a vase of honesty, wheat stalks and a large cardoon head, a carved wooden cat, some carved abstract birds on a tree, the lamp and a bright pottery cat.  So .... how to make a different arrangement of them? playing with colour and pattern, not simply doing them ' as is ', which didn't interest me. Switching the lamp on gave wonderful colour contrasts, the shadows having a positive lavender colour and the highlights a warm amber.  Lig...

Carved wqoden cat in Crayola and Tombow pen in moleskine sketchbook A probable element in the next still life painting - it will be based on the things on the shelf above the tv. Done really fast with my grandson's Crayola pencils, some of which don't work very well on the waxy moleskine paper (but what's new!  so many things don't) and grey and black Tombow pen. I'm wondering if the finished painting might be done in Artbars and Caran d'Ache Neocolor II.   I think the ability to use  coloured line and wash might work with this and the other objects.  I'm also thinking it will need to be a full sheet of watercolour paper to weave the different things together in the way I want. Sketches to do and problems to solve ....

A3 Khadi paper, watercolour, charcoal and ink, variations on a theme I've done a series of variations on this theme from the same original objects. Using sketches done from life I've then simplified, moved things around on the paper, played with patterns and in different media, rather like the way musicians plays with a theme, creating variations and counterpoint. I'm exploring the ways that still life can interest me as I don't find doing conventional set ups do. This one started with tinted watercolour washes, in a variety of greys that I mixed, developed with charcoal and white and paynes grey acrylic inks, with a little white oil pastel.  It's fun to work within a limited colour range like this. The Khadi paper is interesting to work on.  It's pure rag, heavy and quite absorbent so the paint doesn't sit on the surface as with some papers.  The paper is curling in the photo as it was still damp but it is actually square straight edged.   A...

Experimenting with still life - jazz in paint.  Watercolour and oil pastel I meet up with a group of friends, fellow painters, once a month and we critique each others work, talk about art, exhibitions. artists etc and put on exhibitions ourselves.  We all work very differently.   We decided to challenge ourselves to tackle a subject we rarely do - still life - and each find an angle on it that makes it interesting to us.  We've talked about doing a project on it for some time and decided to stop talking and start doing : >).  We all have to take an A3 painting to the next meeting.  This is mine so far. As usual, the photograph doesn't bring out some of the subtle colour changes : >( This is based on sketches I did a year or two ago- you can see some of them here , here , here and here . This one was done with watercolour on Khadi rag paper (A3) with some gold, copper,  orange and irridescent pale blue Sennelier oil pastel scri...