and Claire who have moved to Wales have been converting an old Chapel house, upon a recent visit it is almost complete and a mighty fine job Martin has made. They had spoken about purchasing a painting from me but this fell by the wayside and instead set a challenge for myself, Jo, Hugh and Su to produce a painting each; we were dually given a blank canvas and told to paint whatever we wanted!!!

Here is the second stage at present, deciding on the rest of the colour schemes – mixing lots of colours tee hee:)

The first drawing – ordered from Czech on a trip their last year from Petra who is a major fan of the French hero. Over a drink or six I agreed to produce a drawing for him, not something I would normally do and tried putting it off as much as possible anyhow, the night before he was due to arrive from Czech I spent a couple of intense hours in my studio working to complete it! I almost completed by the early hours of the morning, only requiring final touches. The next day at work I took it in with me to finish off before school, which, gladly I did. The result was that a colleague saw the drawing remarked how excellent it was and then commissioned my to do a drawing for her, from an old family photograph! (the original was not in great condition and only 8cm x 4cm!!

  This has led onto more drawing commissions, the later being of a colleagues sister and fiancé for their wedding present/use for table places at the wedding itself.

I must admit, I don’t particularly enjoy working from photos in this way although I set myself little challenges with each one. The family group was to get the detail of the garden in the background, the couple texture and folds of the clothing.Anyhow, I have a few more in the pipeline and the money I get is a nice bonus

small detail of work in progress – its going to take some time I think, but I am working on other things as this progressess!!

a little obvious to start off with!

Finally, managed to spend some time on a painting that I’ve been working on. Its taken several transformations along the way, and has in some way reverted back to earlier work; although I don’t feel that it has been a backward step – revisiting past ways of working and colours has taken me forward; in more recent paintings I have felt that some element for me has been missing. Going back to under painting and building up layers and creating slight surface textures is something I like to do and in this painting I feel that some of that has returned.
New work in the just three words series will have elements of this and each painting, although basically the same dimensions will develop differently in terms of materials and styles – its a challenge I am looking forward to.
The other series I am undertaking is one which hopefully will let me explore a different way of working, using many different materials – ones which I am not familiar with and in some cases have no skills in eg creating neon lighting! More on this series as it develops.
At present I have not got a title for the painting… one thought was ‘not jimi’ (as in Hendrix) which came about in a conversation with Oz one evening!
Still thinking.

Having been unable to spend time painting recently, managed to get back on task and complete the first of this series. Purchased 25 canvasses yesterday and have been priming them in readiness!

I remember the time spent on this painting and it is still one of my favourites. The surface created by underpainting and applying several layers creates great depth (not visible in photo – as per usual!!!). The red used was one I mixed up some time ago, and as usual I store paint in old coffee jars, alas, it had become sticky and unusable. So I spent time mixing up another batch, the aim was to get close, which I managed. I have now applied the first red layer and have made some changes by adding more cadmium red to add a lighter hue/tone, I will see if this has been effective when next layer applied.
again – photo quality is poor……

couple more layers of white me thinks. Still unsure about red lettering – do I keep red, if so, lighten/keep the same or darken? do I go back to the original white as intended – a lot more work and thinking, further updates tomorrow