I scumbled a mix of Ultramarine Blue, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Orange, Permanent Sap Green, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon and Warm White over the sky which has come out as it is, not what I intended but...
I then added another glaze layer of Permanent Sap Green and Alizarin Crimson over the darks.
Colours used: Alizarin Crimson, Genuine Chinese Vermillion, Brilliant Pink, Permanent Sap Green and Lemon Yellow.
I have gone back to one of my favourite subjects, disused or run down petrol (gas) stations. I kind of know what I want to do with this but I have so many competing things I want to try that it is difficult narrowing down what I want to do with this one. I know it will be about a strong design and colour but also want to knock it all back with semi-transparent glazes which could turn out to be a mess but I'm sure I'll learn a lot from it!
This is the tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet but this time with Alizarin Crimson too as I am planning this picture to be about red, a colour that I love to use but have been unable so far to come up with something satisfying yet.
Oil on mdf 18 1/2" x 18 1/2".
I have painted this because I am not sure about the previous painting that was destined for my upcoming slot on Every Day Original. I will decide in the coming minutes as I post this as to which one I put up for sale. I was trying to get across a feeling of bright sunlight and heat and as usual has come out differently to what I originally envisaged particularly in terms of the colour which changed to what you see now as I ramped up the feeling of dusty heat. The background is based on an old engraving of Mosul in Northern Iraq and the barge is a bit of a steal from a Gerome painting.
Oil on linen 16" x 12".
There is a short step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.
Colours used were: Manganese Violet, Winsor Violet, Manganese Blue Hue, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange, Yellow Lake Deep, Winsor Yellow, Lemon Yellow, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon, Zinc White and Warm White.
I'm not sure about the previous painting "The Cloud Palace of Hakim Bey" so I'm doing another Orientalist picture for Every Day Original just in case. This one will be all about the lighting, a bright sun is being reflected onto the water where the barge is floating by and am hoping for a dazzling effect on the water here. I'm not sure what colours I am going to use yet, that will be determined tomorrow morning over my breakfast coffee...
This is the tonal underpainting stage in which I have used my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and applied with a flat brush and a rag.
Oil on linen 16" x 12".
Hakim Bey came to power at the age of sixteen as the other members vied for the throne after his father had died due to suspected poisoning. Although young he was wily in the ways of the Court just like his father and was able to position himself to take over by a combination of ruthless murders of his Mother's side of the family and sending most of his Father's side into exile after maiming under torture so that they no longer posed a threat to his position. Hakim Bey considered this to be a great act of kindness on his behalf which set the tone for his reign from then on. Over the years however paranoia set in as he doubted his own wisdom of letting those family members live and decided to build a new palace high up on the side of a mountain trusting that it was impregnable from any future threat by armies or indeed assassins sent by what was left of his resentful family. To an outsider the palace looked fantastical and enchanted but this belied the dark secret of Hakim Bey's rise to power as he slowly descended into a life of debauchery and paranoia eventually being ended by a knife to the throat by a courtier loyal to a distant cousin who Hakim Bey had forgot to deal with. This ruler proved to be worse than Hakim Bey but that's another story...
Well, that's what I heard...
For some reason I struggled a bit with this painting, maybe because I used hardly any reference so maybe I have learnt a lesson in basing Fantasy a bit more on reality! I was after a Maxfield Parrish look but the painting as is often the case went on it's own way and only has some of the feel that I originally intended. At one point I was thinking of giving up on it but I decided to ditch the original foreground and paint in more clouds which I think saved the picture...
This will probably be on sale on my upcoming slot on Every Day Original later this month unless I come up with another one before then.
Oil on linen 16" x 12".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.
I have now received the copies of "Jalan Jalan" from the printers and am in the position of taking orders from anybody that may be interested in buying one. It is an 84 page softback book full colour throughout A4 format with seven chapters that cover the landscape, people, offerings, and ceremonies with a small section at the end of my paintings and drawings that resulted from those trips.
The book costs £15.00. These are the prices including post and packing:
UK £20.00
EU £24.00 (new EU VAT rules may mean the recipient having to pay 20% local VAT tax. I always mark them as a "Gift" but sometimes the Customs ignore this)
USA £33.00
Australia £31.00
Indonesia £32.00
Agharta
The collector that commissioned "Imrryr" has also bought two other paintings which I will ship to him altogether to Singapore where he lives. He has bought an illustration artwork from the 1980s/90s for a book by Roger Taylor called "The Fall of Fyorlund", an acrylic on board painting and a more recent oil on linen picture called "Agharta" which is handily the same size as "Imrryr" which makes it much simpler to ship.
"The Fall of Fyorlund" acrylic on board 10" x 17"
"Agharta" oil on linen 30" x 20"
The Fall of Fyorlund
Colours used: Ultramarine Blue, Ultramarine Violet, Manganese Violet, Winsor Violet, Kings Blue Light, Permanent Orange, Burnt Sienna, Lemon Yellow, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon, Yellow Lake Deep, Zinc White and Warm White.
This is probably destined for my upcoming slot on Every Day Original later this month and is another Orientalist piece as they seem so popular and I enjoy painting them. I'm aiming for something of a Maxfield Parrish feel to this one but as ever paintings seem to have a mind of their own and might turn out to be different!
This is the tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and applied with brushes and a rag for the clouds.
Oil on linen 16" x 12".
He asked me to reinterpret a painting I did in the 1980s for a Paper Tiger book called "Realms Of Fantasy" of Imrryr the main city on Melniboné in Michael Moorcock's Elric books which was also used for the cover. He understood that I don't paint the way I did in the 1980s (hard edge acrylics) and was happy for me paint it in oils in the softer more atmospheric way I do today.
I kept the light source in the same place behind the city but made it more atmospheric by lighting the whole picture in a misty morning light with the sun hitting the tops of the towers in the city and the surrounding battlements that come round to the foreground, the rest is in shadow. This helped me separate the foreground tower bathed in morning sun from the bottom of the cliff where the maze walls are with a ship passing out of them to aid the sense of scale. I actually kept the basic structure of the original, the main difference being changing most of the straight lines into curves and the lighting into morning light.
The buyer is very happy with it and indeed has bought two more, an old book cover painting and a more recent oil painting details of which I will post up separately in a later post.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".
I went to a lot of effort and expense in those days to get them as I was pretty much obsessed with the island and it's culture, managing to get there six times overall so I thought why not put them together in a book as self publishing is so easy these days. Neither "The Magic Sky" nor this one are intended to be money-making exercises, just a way of getting this stuff out there instead of languishing in folders on my computer.
There have been a million photos taken of Bali including a lot better than mine but in this book I have tried to avoid the obvious pictures that every tourist takes when they are there and instead have focused on things I saw that I went to a lot of trouble to get to and would not be things that tourists would get to see such as ceremonies and festivals. It has been written for people that have some knowledge of the island and it's culture and I have included Balinese names and terms when appropriate. It might also appeal to people that want to see Bali as it was in those days before the development that has occurred since the 90s although it could be said that these are also photos of the timeless Bali that never really changes and is all there if you go looking for it.
The seven chapters cover the landscape, people, offerings and ceremonies with a small section at the end of my paintings and drawings that resulted from those trips. It has 84 A4 pages printed in colour throughout with the books arriving from the printers next week.
It looks like the book will cost £15.00 plus packing and postage and will be advertised on this blog, Facebook and Instagram.
For anybody interested in buying one it looks like these will be the prices including postage and packing:
UK £20.00
EU £24.00
USA £33.00
Australia £31.00
Indonesia £32.00
