Seafront Twilight - stage 1

This will be my first painting on canvas....I have packed bubble wrap into the back of the stretcher to lessen the way the canvas goes away from you when you press a brush onto it as I am used to hard surfaces to paint on. I liked the way that the paint went onto the canvas board in the previous painting so I am seeing how I get on with stretched canvas. As you can see, after my initial "drawing" with Burnt Sienna which I left to dry for a few hours, I have blocked in some transparent colour with added Liquin to get rid of the white and to produce a tonal underpainting. I then ran a dry 1 1/2" household paintbrush across all of it apart from the brick walls which I want to have a nice texture. I will be away in Cornwall for a couple of days from tomorrow so I will have to wait until Wednesday before I can get on to the next stage.

Time For Your Bath!

Another two-day rubber duck painting to try out working on canvas. After seeing Mucha's The Slav Epic in Prague last week, I was fired up with trying a painting on canvas, in this case canvas board. I really enjoyed painting this and will now move on to something more challenging, whether it's on canvas or canvas board I don't know at this point. Although the board was pre-gessoed I still gave it a coat of oil primer before commencing and as you can see from the earlier stages, I painted on complimentary opposite underpainting; very pale red/orange on subdued green/blue and vice versa. 16" x 16" oil on canvas board.

Embassy Court Dusk

Finally finished this painting after a wonderful 5 days in Prague interrupted progress! I have wanted to paint this well-known Art Deco building in Hove (just I think) for some time but could never find an angle I was happy with. Then a friend, Kate Shields, moved to a penthouse flat and started having life drawing sessions there; on the way out of her flat  after a drawing session I saw this view from the back of the building and realised I had my angle. The lighting and colour are my invention as I didn't want a white building! Oil on board 36" x 18".

"Gathering Information" - my latest article in Artists & Illustrators magazine

In the newly published Summer 2013 issue of Artists & Illustrators magazine can be found on page 66 my article on gathering information for studio paintings whilst travelling. It centres around my recent trip to Southern India, the article being illustrated by four of the resulting paintings as well as reference photographs and gouache sketches made on location.

Embassy Court -stage 6

Nearly finished the main building, another day should do it. I don't think I will finish it before I go to Prague on Sunday...but you never know, it would be nice if I can! The orange colour should make more sense when I have finished the sky and background.

Embassy Court - stage 5

Put more work into the main building today; I think I need to desaturate the sky nearest to Embassy Court  at some point tomorrow and need to break up the pink/orange with some colour coming in from the sky on the windows.

Embassy Court - stage 4

Have now painted some initial colours over most of the picture to give me some idea as to how they will work. I want the building to glow so I will need to glaze it with transparent colours. I am putting areas of the red/orange all over the painting as I want the building to harmonise with the rest of the picture and try to get across that it is white not pink/orange.

Embassy Court - stages 2 and 3

I am going to set this at a time approaching dusk with Embassy Court picking up a soft, glowing orange/pink light set against a quite dark green/blue sky (complimentaries). The background will be painted soft with bright highlights on the road coming from car headlights and street lights. I have gone quite dark initially on the building as I want to put a lot of lighter orange/pinks on top with the darker colour slightly showing through underneath.

Embassy Court - stage 1

This is an Art Deco building in Hove that I have wanted to paint for some time but could never find an angle on it that I was happy with. Fortunately a friend has moved into a penthouse flat (fabulous views of the seafront) and when I went there to do some life drawing (she has monthly sessions in the flat) I was struck by the views of the building from the back. This is the "drawing" stage using Burnt Sienna with a thin brush. I want this to be contrasty and colourful and quite different to my last painting. Should be good to show at the Brighton Art Fair in September.

Madurai Rickshaw Ride

This was a tricky one to paint. I am trying to get across the feeling of being in the back of an autorickshaw going down a street in Madurai although it is a typical street familiar to anyone that has been to India. Because the view is from inside a quite cramped space with a driver in the front that in reality takes up a large proportion of one's field of vision, I had to compose it in such a way that in order to get in the views from each side and make sure that the necessarily centrally-placed figure and interior didn't dominate I had to make the driver smaller, open up the view through the front and distort the roof angles at the sides to get to see the maximum amount of street detail. It would not normally be a good idea to have a centrally-based composition in one-point perspective so in order to mitigate these potential problems I made each side of the street very different to each other, tried to link the interior and background through colour so they merged together and painted the interior in soft focus in relation to the street to mimic the way the eye would see it; all of these were necessary to deal with the compositional conundrum. This is the seventh painting of a series based on my trip to South India last year that I hope to exhibit as a group but have no idea at this stage where. There is a step-by-step progress of this painting on earlier posts on this blog. 36" x 18" oil on board.