I might have only awarded that Emily Ball book one palette but it has got me mood to do some portraits and, in particular to try to get the gaze...
6. Recurring Themes/Styles
The Cities Were Abandoned And The Forests Echoed Song
It's been a bad day at the office today. I wanted to use some of the lessons I learned the other day after sorting my paintings by colour key. I...
El Bandito
Today's painting started off from a reference photo of Lee Van Cleef in The Good, The Bad And The Ugly but I never could get any sort of likeness...
Another Look At Colour Keys
This post has been planned for a while but it's only now that I've got enough data around to be able to finally put it together. A while back, I...
Moon, Turn The Tides…Gently Gently Away
I'm currently reading How To Make A Watercolour Paint Itself by Nita Engle and thought I'd try out some of her ideas today with a stormy sea...
Hartlip Church In The Sun
It's the 29th of August already! The local church has another tea and cake afternoon on 12th September and I promised them I'd have another...
Still Raining, Still Dreaming
Having learned my lessons, here's my second attempt of the day. There are only three colours in the whole painting. Payne's grey and light red...
Malayavanta Hill, Near Hampi
I'm still on the watercolours and, yet again, I’ve gone for some precariously balanced rocks. These seem to be my thing in 2021. They're great,...
My Left Foot
After painting The Graduate, I wanted to keep experimenting with the oil pastels. I've still not really worked out what I'll normally be painting...
The Graduate
It's been eleven days since my last piece of work but with the sun out and some chores out of the way, the gazebo's back up in the garden and I'm...
Logical Right Eye
And so straight on to the right eye. The same techniques as I used for the left eye. Whereas with watercolours and to a lesser extent inktense...
Artistic Left Eye
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...