Rain In The Canyon - stage 5

 Worked on the canyon wall at right and faffed around with the rain again. It looks a bit too dark and contrasty here but will adjust tomorrow before starting on the foreground tomorrow.

Rain In The Canyon - stage 4

 Pretty much finished the sky and canyon and making a start on the nearer canyon wall at right tomorrow. I have gave it a blue wash (not shown here) and then stopped as I need to decide on what colours I am going to use here...

Rain In The Canyon - stage 3

 Pretty much finished the sky bar finishing the rain at left that can't be done until the canyon is finished. Have made a start on the canyon today and hope to get the background finished tomorrow including the rain although I'm tempted to have some of the rain falling over the dark canyon wall at right...

New colour used: Warm Light Yellow

Rain In The Canyon - stage 2

 First colour pass on the sky, the idea behind the painting is the screen of grey rain coming in from the right starting to cover the relatively complex shapes of the clouds and the canyon (I start on the canyon tomorrow). It's not as contrasty as it appears on this post...

Colours used so far:  Phthalocyanine Blue, Manganese Blue Hue, Dioxazine Purple, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon and Warm White.

Rain In The Canyon - stage 1

 This is probably the first painting to directly come out of last year's tour round the National Parks in SW USA and is of a memorable time when about 4.00 in the afternoon a rainstorm came down the Grand Canyon towards us and we had to dash for shelter. Apparently at that time of year it pretty much happened every afternoon  (July). All those shots I took of the landscapes I saw didn't really fit the theme of the "Home Land" series as they were too specific to quite famous locations so very little was used of those photos... until now.

I'm painting it as my entry for the annual show organised by the International Guild Of Realism with the exhibition in a gallery in Santa Fe later this year. If it doesn't get in I will put it up for sale on Artfinder, got to hurry up though it's nearing the deadline....

This is the tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and a couple of brushes.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

The Snow Palace

 Fancied doing a blue nocturne harking back to my love of blue Edmund Dulacs of which I saw a roomful at the Dulwich Picture Gallery many moons ago. I wasn't going to originally but I changed my mind and put some lights in the windows to give me the complementary as well as to give a bit more variety of colour. Set in an imaginary Central Asia where this is just about possible I tried to make the architecture more like a palace and less like a mosque by leaving out the minarets for instance.

I have painted this for my upcoming February 23 slot on Every Day Original and will post on that site later today.

Oil on fine cotton 12" x 16"

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

Almenara Art Prize Residency

 I woke up this morning to a fantastic surprise, The Almenara Art Prize messaged me on Instagram to say that my application for their artists residency next year had been accepted. This will be a month (or three weeks) staying at a villa outside the town of Montoro near Cordoba where I can paint the landscape (and maybe Cordoba too as it's been on my bucket list for years) along with another artist yet to be revealed. Since painting on the Sky Landscape Artist Of The Year plein air painting seems to be making a comeback in my work as I also have the upcoming artist residency in Pennsylvania this May too. 

This is all fine with me and fits my decision taken a while ago to try and instigate opportunities through my work for new challenges and also to travel to other countries for a purpose and not just a holiday; if I am going to contribute to the pollution of the planet by flying in jets to other countries at least there is a purpose to it!

I stay at the villa for free so have to pay for my travel and food and also have to leave a painting behind as a thank you and as an addition to their collection. It runs from 16 April to 6 May 2026.

Here is a link:

https://www.thealmenaracollection.com/page/40172/art-residencies