It’s been taking me increasingly long to complete paintings, a good example of which is a 20” x 30” painting of some water lilies which took me around 6 months from start to finish between February and August this year. As an antidote to this sloth-like working pace, I set myself a challenge this week…
Category: Oils
Four Ducks in Search of Adventure
Over the last four years I have donated work to two ‘Stars on Canvas’ art auctions in aid of the Willow Foundation, a national charity raising money to facilitate special days for seriously ill young adults. More on the foundation can be read here: http://www.willowfoundation.org.uk. Participating artists are asked to complete a work of art…
Three Sunflowers in a Glass Vase
I started running painting workshops from our home in the Wirral recently. To date the structure of each workshop has followed a similar basic pattern, with students attempting a copy of an ‘old master’ painting in the morning, followed by the painting of a new work from life (or photographs) utilising the same approach during…
Portrait: ‘My Judith’
I started work on this portrait of my fiancée Judith around a year ago, towards the end of summer 2012. Initial sessions from life were followed by sporadic work from photographs, until it was finally completed a couple of weeks ago. It was painted in Winsor & Newton alkyds (quick drying oils) on 20″ x 16″…
Judith’s Chair, 18 August 2013
I picked up my brushes around 4pm yesterday with the intention of completing this painting in one session, an exercise in working quickly. By 7pm the paint surface had become too wet to work any further and the natural light in the room had become too dim. I thought the exercise had been a useful…
Drawing Upon Life 