Piccadilly Fog

Whilst preparing a board by painting a green/grey over a pink wash I noticed the potential for getting across a realistic fog effect, particularly if it was bright lights in fog. This gave me the idea for another Piccadilly painting as a companion to the earlier one, "Piccadilly 6 p.m.". I remember "pea soupers" as they used to be called like this when I first moved to London in 1974. In those days many households and indeed power stations still burnt coal and coke which combined with the river weather conditions to produce these "pea soupers" and were very common in London and indeed the rest of the cities in the country up to the late '70's. 12" x 12" oil on board.

Embankment Sphinx

This is the companion picture to "Queen Of The Thames" although this was painted first but needed a layer of Liquin before photographing to bring out the shadows. One of two Victorian-era sphinxes that guard Cleopatra's Needle, the 2000 year old obelisk on the side of the Thames near Embankment tube station. 12" x 12" oil on board.

Queen Of The Thames

This is one of two small paintings of one of the sphinxes by Cleopatra's Needle on the side of the Thames near Embankment tube station. The other one, actually painted first, needs a coat of Liquin to bring out the shadows before it is finished and I can post it on the blog and website. Oil on board 12" x 12".

Battersea Moon

Another two-day painting, this one a rather Whistlerian view of Battersea Power Station. 12" x 12" oil on board.

Ed's Diner, Soho

The second of my small London paintings, this one is of Ed's Diner on Old Compton Street after some rain. Rain suits city and urban street scenes as it gives you a chance to have some fun with quite abstract shapes and colours. After the next painting that will probably be of Battersea Power Station, I want to carry on with these rainy street scenes but take more risks with how I paint them as they are still too rigid in the way they are painted.....12" x 12" oil on board.

Piccadilly Circus 6pm

The first of what could be a number of small London paintings. I put a time limit of two days and absolutely no more on each of these small paintings and then see how much I can get done in that time. I think that this has come about due to the 50 minute paintings that I have been doing at the Sussex County Arts Club Monday afternoon sessions which along with the plein air oil paintings have got me painting a lot quicker and somewhat looser due to the time constraint. I await with interest how much this will affect how I paint larger paintings when I go back to them! This one is called "Piccadilly Circus 6pm", oil on board 12" x 12".

En plein air painting - Broadstone

Rich Newman, Paul Allen and myself went to the Ashdown Forest yesterday for some plein air painting. We found a really good spot called Broadstone with great views that looked nice and quiet and we got going pretty quickly. After a couple of hours during which we realised that it wasn't quite as quiet as we first thought, a brightly clad family plonked themselves down in front of Paul and proceeded to have a picnic much to Paul's consternation. Now bearing in mind the amount of space they had to choose from it was incredible how they chose that spot having clearly noticed us previous to choosing where they were going to picnic......Anyway, oil on board 18 1/2" x 18 1/2".

Monday Afternoon Life Session - 6 August

After a bit of a gap I managed to get along to Kate Shields' Monday afternoon life drawing session at the Sussex County Arts Club again. Chiara was the model and together with Kate they made up more of a set for Chiara to interact with, the first 50 minute pose was with a mirror and paint brushes, including a jar of water and paints and the second pose had a Buddha-like pose with fruit. I think I'm getting better but still a long, long way to go....

Cissbury Yellow

I am leaving the seafront alone for a while and instead proceeding with a series of small landscapes. I want to concentrate on mood above all else and am looking for a rich and contrasty feel to them with a lot of emphasis on the sky. This is a view from Cissbury Hill in West Sussex wherein I have switched the field of flax that I had in an earlier painting to a field of yellow oilseed rape. Oil on board 14" x 8".

Seafront Morning/Evening

Seafront Evening

Seafront Morning

A new pair of small paintings (8" x 14") of the same location at different times of the day, "Seafront Evening" and "Seafront Morning". Oil on board.

Another feature in "Pratique Des Arts" magazine

On returning from a few days away I found a large manilla envelope addressed to "Monsieur Mark Harrison" in the hallway inside which was a copy of the August/September issue of "Pratiques Des Arts. I had no idea why it had arrived until I got to the centre pages where I came across a step-by-step demonstration by me of an oil painting of Venice that was unused from the previous feature on my work. Unfortunately this magazine is not available to buy in the UK so I am reproducing it here although if there are any viewers of this blog living in Europe that may be interested in buying the magazine, it is issue no.105.