Merry Christmas!

 

I wish you all a very merry christmas and hope that peace and goodwill are yours throughout 2013.

 

I would also take this opportunity to thank everyone who has shown interest in my humble bloggings and contributed with comments, different points of view, virtual pats on the back and sales! I am always very appreciative. 

Two 19" x 12" Oil

 

I'm calling this done, although a couple of places need tiddling, but I won't say where in case you've not spotted it! He he!

Two 10" x 12" Oil WIP

 

This is to be a gift for a friend, who is to visit during the holiday. I hope he will forgive the theft of the photo from his facebook page!

 

 

Alfie 15" x 19" Oil

 

Finished, framed and gone.......next!

Alfie WIP

 

This is a commission.....a birthday pressie, I think. Anyway, so far so good....except, as usual, I do wish I had been doing the background along with the dog!

WA - Pass the Object

 

We all took along something Christmas-y to draw. We had a set time and a different medium for each one, and then the object was passed to the person to our left.

 

Graphite and Sharpie.

Different sized drawing pens with left hand (I'm right-handed)

Contour drawing looking at paper.

 Watercolour

Contour drawing NOT looking at paper.

Then Judith showed us the 'magic' painting with watersoluble black ink. If you add more water to a drawing after the ink has dried, the ink separates into it's component colours...blue and yellow!

 

Love this one!

 



Painting.......or not.

Siblings  20" x 16"   Oil

 

I have finished this commission,  just in time for Christmas, and really hope the recipient likes it and think she has a wonderful brother to think of such a lovely gift. Can't believe I started this back in September!

 

So.....I have been painting, a little, but, I confess I have turned my attention elsewhere....back to my first love...sort of. When I was 17 I wanted to be Michelangelo! I wanted to have created 'David' and 'Pieta' but real life took over and I have never, or ever shall, have the wherewithall to realise such ambition. But carve wood I can do, or at least I can try. My efforts are not for public scrutiny as yet...but don't go away!

A Couple of Portraits

Hoodie   12" x 10"  Charcoal

Caramel  14" x 18"  Oil

Daisies 10" x 12" Oil

Yo-Yo

Sixteen  10" x 12"  Oil

 

I have been an emotional yo-yo this weekend. I sold no paintings at a local exhibition in Swaffham and felt really down. So much that I couldn't lift a paintbrush yesterday and wondered at the point of it all.

Then, yesterday evening, I received a call to tell me I had won a prize elsewhere. This was for the members vote for the best in show at the  Hertford Art Society  Annual Members' Exhibition.

I am really thrilled, because I think it praise indeed to be admired by fellow artists, and also because I won the same prize last year! Howzatt!

Woohoo....I'm off to paint!

 

 

Boats 20" x 8" Oil

Chroma Interactive Acrylics

Here is a link to more information about the re-wettable acrylics, for those of you who haven't heard about them.
Chroma Interactive

WA - Pat Gavin Demo

 

 

 

Pat Gavin is a freelance illustrator who has done a lot of work in television and who came along to demonstrate his way of painting in acrylics. He used the interactive acrylics, the ones you can wet again with an unlocking agent.

 

 

This is his oil painting which he used for reference.

 

 

He entertained us with stories from his television days, answered all our questions freely and knowledgably, painted non stop and finished with this painting. I do enjoy watching someone paint confidently.

 

DAWN  20" x 16"  Oil

 

Today, I took my paintbrush with renewed confidence, and made a start on a painting I have wanted to do for a while but didn't know how to approach.

It is from a photo I took, at dawn, of a house in my village, but it is the stream and reflections that grabbed my attention.

Thank you, Pat Gavin, I learned a thing or two!

Boats 16" x 20" Oil

Another version of this image, which I love. I was trying to capture the light and the sparkle.

Progress

 

Esmeralda  12" x12"  Oil

 

Sorry about the glare, but you see where thid is going, It seems very slow to be working this way, but I am not fretting over the likeness like I usually do, I must have got it in the underpainting.

 

Boats  14" x 11"  Oil

 

Also, today, I tiddled these boats, making the foreground ones  bigger.  The perspective seems wrong.  I am above them, but it doesn't read right. Any ideas would be appreciated.. I sent in a submission form for a local exhibition, making up some titles, and I thought this would be the quick route, but I am not happy. Start from scratch, with a new painting, then????

Work in Progress Esmeralda 12" x 12" Oil

 

I thought I would try a different approach, with a monochrome underpainting, to which I have added some local colour. So far, so good........now comes the difficult bit!

This is from a photograph belonging to Judith, a fellow WA artist, which I begged to be allowed to paint as soon as I saw it. Well who could resist such a cheeky stare? Thank you Judith.

WA - Vettriano or Monet

 

The brief was to paint in the style of ....and as Vettriano is quite similar (?) to stuff I do anyway, I went with waterlilies, although that is my only nod to Monet, except perhaps the colours. I enjoyed slapping the paint about...not so thrilled at the outcome!

Kimono 12" x 16" Oil

HAS Life

 

I made it to Hertford Art Society Life Drawing on Saturday. You can see the rest of my drawings on my other blog, here.

Sixteen 12" x 16" Oil

WA - Child Portrait

 

Stephanie  10" x 10"  Oil 

I took along my hospital paintings and made no significant progress, so here is a painting of my niece, painted in March 2009, for you to have another look at.

Palette knife

 

I've been pottering today, housework, sorting paintings for exhibition, blah, blah, blah but managed a couple of 10 minute palette knife studies to use up some mixed black paint. Such fun!

Siblings 20" x 16" Oil WIP

 

This is the commission I have been working on, which my client, David , has kindly given permission to post. It's coming together quite well, but then it's just copying a photo, and I'm having a good time. Now the tricky stuff starts...with getting the likeness precisely. It looks like them to me, but I'm not their mother, who is to be the recipient!

WA - Boats

 

Storm  10" x 12"  Oil

Aaaaargh!!!!!

 

This is my fourth painting of Bethany, or that was the plan. It is not Bethany! How come somedays I can't paint? All her features belong to various different people! The painting is bigger than the others, 16" x 20", not bigger than I'm used to painting, but I wish I had done a smaller head and included more body. Ah well, tomorrow is another day.

Receiving 10" x 12" Oil

 

This is the third black and white study of my niece Bethany, all different sizes. The fourth is in progress and my idea is to frame them all together, kind of  a montage. I have a bee in my bonnet, when really, I should be getting on with a couple of commissions. Your own ideas are far more interesting than other folks', but the problem is that commissions buy your dinner!

Jill 12" x 10" Oil

 

I think her fat finger needs tiddling, but apart from that I like it!

WA - Marbles 8" x 7" Watercolour

 

It was so good to get back to West Winch Art Group after the summer break, I've missed the girls and guy.

The brief today was to paint several of one thing, ie shells, pebbles, nuts + bolts. The only thing I have a lot of is marbles, good subject.....but why I elected to take watercolours is a mystery! Next week it's boats/cars/tractors, etc. Ah, that's better, well, boats anyway.

Windy 12" x 14" Oil

 

 

HM Queen Elizabeth II 20" X 16" Oil

 

Eleven weeks, six days and fifteen hours ago I entered the Daily Mail competition to paint the Queen. The prize for winning is to have your painting hung in The National Portrait Gallery, for one day, with the current exhibition of sixty portraits of the Queen.

600 emailed entries were whittled down to thirty, which then had to be sent to London to be judged by Sir Peter Blake, Emma Sergeant and Jonathan Yeo. I gleefully sent my painting to be judged.

The wait has been interminable, with checking emails every half hour, waiting by the letterbox,  carrying my phone everywhere and generally rendering me totally incapable of doing anything!

Today I received a letter.

FAILED!

AGAIN!

 

 

 

Profile Sketch Tiddled...and more...

 

I tiddled this a bit today, but I have mostly been working on a commissioned triple portrait, which I don't (as yet) have permission to post.

 

I've not been painting much lately because house and garden have needed attention...yeah I know...boring! But it will be worth it in the end. I've been digging up trees and knocking down walls so that it feels like I have moved house!

From this....

to this.

This is my lounge minus a wall.

There will soon be a wall and doorway to separate lounge from bedroom and bathroom! French doors to the dining room, new skirting and architrave and floor, and then...then we can decorate. Woohoo!

Profile Sketch 10" x 7.5" Oil

 

It seems like I've wiped everything I've done this week! Useless! I have joined Maggie Lathams' Small Paintings Group on Facebook, so, today I told myself "get on with it!". As the challenge is for watercolour, and I don't have paper, I nevertheless though I would have a go at small. It was one of those paintings where I just didn't worry at the outcome, but instinct took over and it turned out just fine. And I don't like small!