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…

Sunflowers, 31 July 2013

I’ve not been doing much drawing or painting of late. The one painting on which I have sporadically been working (a relatively large painting of Kew Gardens from a photograph I took a few years ago) seems to be taking an eternity. When paintings take so long they tend to wear down my energy and…

Daffodils #4

Most of my ‘gallery’ or commissioned paintings (as opposed to sketches) are currently produced over several sessions. Other than still life paintings, they are more often than not painted from photographic reference. During the course of their production over several weeks and months much of their initial freshness can become lost, along with some of…

An Orange and a Banana…

By means of a break from drawing daffodils I thought I’d do a bit of fruit today: an orange and a banana. This sketch was painted in acrylics, which (as in a post from a couple of days ago – ‘Daffodil #2’) I had been using to try to finish a difficult portrait. Today’s sketch…