Crepusculo San Polo - stage 1

 

While I wait for "Naomi Gold" to dry I am getting on with this, a Venetian painting set at dusk with a light at the end of the passage (sotoportego). This one will be about thicker paint and texture, I might even use the palette knife on some areas.

This is the tonal underpainting stage using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin.

Oil on mdf 12" x 12".

Chefchaoen Bleu

 

"Chefchaoen Bleu" has just sold through Asgard Arts. One of a series of four paintings of walls based on a single colour, in this case blue. Chefchaoen is a village in Morocco where most of the buildings are painted a beautiful blue, another famous village like this is Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia. Unusually I used a palette knife for these wall paintings as it seemed a good way to render the.... render.

Oil on mdf 18 1/2" x 18 1/2".

Ayasofya

 My recent painting "Ayasofya" has just been bought by the same person that bought a previous Istanbul painting "Cold Constantinople"

I was trying something Tonalist with Ayasofya basing it around a blue/green - red/orange colour complementary. In the background is the Byzantine Hagia Sophia Church that was made into a Mosque after the Ottoman conquest. It remained a mosque until Ataturk ruled over Turkey when it became a museum but has recently been returned to functioning as a mosque.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

There is a short progress through this painting in earlier posts on this blog.

Cold Constantinople

Naomi Gold - stage 3

 More of the same today, trying to resist the temptation to smooth it all out. Worried about the colour in the background at the bottom - will have a think about it in the cold light of another day and see if I can think of something. or of course leave it alone...

Naomi Gold - stage 2

 First colour pass over the whole painting. I decided to paint glazes of Transparent Oxide Red and Transparent Oxide Gold over the background which has produced an effect I like but has thrown my plans of keeping the whole picture in a limited palette out of the window. The picture will be now more saturated than I intended so maybe I'll do that on the next one! The plan was warm shadows and cool highlights which I have kind of stuck to but calling it "Naomi Gold" made me veer to having gold in the painting (the original plan was that just referred to the light hitting the jewelry but...) but essentially the figure has been painted with the limited palette in mind.

Colours used were: Manganese Violet, Winsor Violet, Ultramarine Violet, Burnt Sienna, Genuine Chinese Vermillion, Permanent Orange, Naples Yellow and Zinc White.

Naomi Gold - stage 1

 Actually really the second stage because I forgot to photograph stage 1 the tonal underpainting so this is that stage plus a bit of colour put into the background. I intend to paint this more like how I painted "Madurai" recently, in a more painterly way as opposed to my penchant for painting figures too smooth and tight so I intend to resist every temptation to play safe and push myself to take more risks on this one. I want the lightest parts of the painting to be the light hitting the necklace, earrings and nose ring and intend to use a limited palette probably based on the yellow/violet colour complementary, trying to keep it looser and more painterly....

The model again is the lovely Naomi Wood, the photo from a session of a few years ago for an aborted painting called "Naomi Gold", hopefully I make a better job of it than the last one!

Oil on mdf 12" x 12".

Naomi Red

 I decided to call this "Naomi Red" as I am just about to start a companion painting called "Naomi Gold"- a title I used on an abandoned picture from a few years ago. I love red in paintings particularly in figurative ones and have usually struggled with it whenever I do one but I thought that I would give it another try. I am currently exploring the possibilities of parts of a picture fading into a colour or tone and thought that I would try it on a figurative piece (something I rarely paint these days). I wasn't quite sure how I was going to do it on this one and I just decided to wing it and see what I came up with - I quite like it but as ever still basically dissatisfied with the end result. it's OK...

The lovely Naomi Wood is the model (as usual!) and is based on a photograph I took of her some years ago. I always intended the darkest part of the picture to be her eye but shied away from using a cold pale violet mix for the highlights and went for a cool yellow instead; with the predominance of red the basic palette is pretty hot so the concept of cool is relative hence a pale yellow mix being used for the highlights in the end.

Oil on mdf 12" x 12".

There is a short progress through this painting including what colours I used in previous posts on this blog.