Learning from the Old Masters

While normally strongly discouraging my students from copying directly from published copies of other artists’ work without purpose, I do encourage them to experiment with approaches to painting. Practical, directed learning is beneficial if it provides illumination into alternative ways of working. A study of the work of an Old Master painter offers this opportunity….

Baby on Board!

It’s been six months since the arrival of our baby boy Robin and the time has hazily flown by. With a baby around the house it’s unsurprisingly been difficult to find the time to paint, let alone blogging and the like. The foundations for this painting were laid last year, shortly after Judith and I…

Scruffy Man Paints Himself

This self portrait was made a couple of weeks ago, on 29th January 2015. Painted in acrylics on the back of some mount board, it (perhaps unsurprisingly) depicts myself. When wanting to make a figure study from life the self offers a certain convenience. Keen-eyed observers will note that I made little effort to ‘brush…

Moh-Mariko

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…

An Art Demonstration: Painting Dennis

A friend of mine, Dennis Spicer, recently asked me to look after one of his art classes for a couple of weeks whilst he took a break. At the end of my first class sitting in for Dennis, I was asked to demonstrate my working technique to the students the following session. As most of…