IX Gallery

 I have just uploaded 17 paintings for sale on my IX Gallery page, some of which were shown at the recent IX in Reading PA last month.

 https://ixgallery.com/artists/markharrison/

Light On The Citadel sold

 My slightly repainted "Light On The Citadel" sold immediately it was posted on Every Day Original on 28 October. So far every one that I have posted on Every Day Original has sold within minutes of being posted... so far.

This one was originally called "Storm Over The Citadel" but something bugged me about it, it was a bit flat with all the buildings the same muted colour and looked a bit boring. I was originally going to put a fire with smoke under The Citadel but decided in the end to paint in some more light hitting it instead to break up the virtual monochrome.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

IX

 I got back a week ago today from IX in Reading PA. The whole trip went pretty well including the boxes of paintings only taking two days to clear Customs and get delivered to Goggleworks. It was great to meet up with old friends and meet more new ones and the event was as ever a very friendly affair. I sold four paintings over the five days as well as a fifth one that was sold ahead and at the end of the show was shipped off to the buyer by Pat Wilshire.

I was even more surprised to find on my return home that the paintings had already been delivered that morning by FedEx so I was much relieved after expecting the usual battle with UK Customs to get them cleared.

The boxes arrive in the UK!

International Guild of Realism

 My painting "Ghost Station" is now available online in the International Guild of Realism's 2022 Fall Salon Online Exhibition which runs from 20 October to 20 December 2022. It can be found in the Landscape & Architecture section on the homepage of the show.

"Ghost Station" is one of my paintings in my ongoing series"Roadside America" (and indeed "The Big Sky" too). Oil on linen 30" x 20".

https://www.realismguild.com/2022FallSalon/

Rick's Café Américain

 

This idea has been on the back burner for a while and I decided to go ahead with painting it as it could be a nice one to show at IX next week (!) as it is bit different to the others although within the Orientalist themes that I have been painting recently. It is of course based on the Bogart/Bergman film "Casablanca", a favourite film for a lot of people including myself. The idea occurred when I was in the middle of painting a few Orientalist pictures of busy souks and medinas when it dawned on me that I could kind of bring them up to date (well 1942!) with an imagination of Rick's Café Américain as though it really was in the casbah of Casablanca.

I did see what Midjourney could come up with and although it did somehow get me started you will see that I used very little of it, I just liked the look of it. I found a still from the film that showed the exterior of the Café and used that (apart from the second set of doors) and then set it in an imagined relatively scruffy street with night lighting.

I will be taking this over to IX in my luggage as it was finished after I had sent the main boxes and it looks like they have had Customs clearance and will be delivered to GoggleWorks today which is happily very different to my previous dealings with US Customs!

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Midjourney

Film Still

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 7

 

Hmmm this seems to be quite a fiddly painting, for the number of hours it is taking to paint I will have to charge more than I normally do for this size.

I think I have worked out a way of doing the lettering so I have painted a transparent desaturated blue over it today ready for the first layer of white tomorrow. Otherwise I have been going over the painting refining things as well as putting in the brightly lit shopfronts. I decided to make it a bit dim inside Rick's with a suggestion of a woman sitting at a table by the entrance.

Rick's Cafe Americain - stage 6

 Just working over most of the painting, resolving issues as I go along. No new colours used. Need to make a start on that lettering soon...