It seems the best way to learn how to use oil pastels is to watch videos on YouTube. Today I watched Scrooge The Profit describing the rule of...
Author: Steve
Create Perfect Paintings, Nancy Reyner – Book Review
Now this is more like it. This is a 144 page hardback that I've been after for a while and that I was very glad to see appear at the door over the...
Beginner’s Guide To Painting With Oil Pastels, Tim Fisher – Book Review
Here's the first of my post-birthday book reviews. This was a (slightly thin) 96 page paperback. The wife bought me it along with the Sennelier...
Oil Pastel Testing
I learned a lesson from my first time using watercolours, markers and inktense pencils. And that lesson was not to attempt a masterpiece first...
Oil Pastels!
It's my birthday and the front page headline on stash news is that I’m going to be trying out oil pastels. The wife bought me a set of 24...
Cliffside Tree, Queendown Warren
I've been meaning for a couple of weeks to head out and do some plein air painting. After a thunderstorm yesterday, the weather felt cooler and...
A Desert Episode
In that last painting, Six Ways To Look At The Moon, I was so pleased with how the bottom left subpainting turned out that I thought I'd have a go...
Six Ways To Look At The Moon
I'm a bit short of ideas for watercolours at the moment. Maybe I need to wander around the village again but only if I'm prepared to put in some...
JenB, Sitting
It's absolutely roasting outside. I promise never again to claim it's too cold outside to paint. But this weather! Too hot, too sweaty and too...
Balanced Rock, Big Bend National Park, Texas
I was feeling a bit short of ideas so I googled for precarious rocks again and found this one in Texas. It looks a cracker with its interesting sky...
Kjeragbolten
Yesterday's paintings were bad. To help me find some form, I thought I'd look for some precarious rocks. I managed to find Kjeragbolten, which is...
King Street, Cambridge
So here's today's second painting. I'm prepared to put the first one down as a warmup but this one needs to be better. It's another view of New...
Domination
Back to painting today after a bit of a break for rain and football. I've done two paintings today but it's been a while, so don't expect a...
Gregg Allman
There was no way I was going to stop at Cher, so I moved on to Gregg. I wanted something that would contrast Cher's chiaroscuro against a coloured...
Cher
Before I head back to watercolours tomorrow, I thought I really should give the marker pens a quick go. So I googled for black and white celebrity...
Gabrielle
More inktense figure drawing as promised. This is a new model for me: Gabrielle. For colours today, I used bark, baked earth, leaf green,...
Kristina Marie
It's been raining for a few days and there's a lot of wind predicted for tomorrow morning, so the gazebo's down and I'm not painting in the garden....
The Insanity Of Jones
I'd got the last page of my watercolour block so thought I'd go all out on applying some texture to the painting surface without having to worry...
Clare Bridge, Cambridge
Back to the painting today after what's been quite a long break. Today's subject is Clare Bridge from Clare College, Cambridge, a subject that's...
Painting Expressive Watercolour, Bridget Woods – Book Review
I'd been after this book for a while and got it as a Fathers' Day present. It's a 192-page paperback with some quite dense text in places so has...