Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Street Sketches


montage - figures between 5-16cm high

We live in a flat above an office, about fifteen feet up, and an angled window bay looks up the street. I often stand or sit there and draw people as they walk past. A lot of the sketches simply don’t work out, but these are some of the more successful ones. (Best viewed if you click the picture above – you’ll get a much, much bigger version).

I use whatever medium comes to hand. It just so happens that I have the watercolour gear up at the window just now and am trying to improve my technique with oriental brushes. These are great for drawing because you can go from a very fine mark to a great splodge in one stroke. The mass of hair holds a huge amount of paint, and you don’t have to keep replenishing the brush every few seconds.

The observable period of the passers-by is usually about 60 - 45 seconds, during which they will have changed aspect. Then you have a little bit of ‘memory time’ before forgetting things and inventing. I have the full palette of watercolour available, but it’s fastest to paint in monochrome - normally Payne’s Grey or Sepia - and if need be, write colour notes afterwards. The paper is ordinary A4 computer paper, and wrinkles very easily when wet, but it’s very cheap and convenient for these exercises. The paint quality, though, IS important, as lesser paints fade and pale disappointingly when dry, and the denser artist’s stuff always goes so much further.

I don’t know who any of these folk are, except one. I’m glad to say that Madam recognized herself as the figure in the bottom right corner.

(Coat, trousers, shoes – black. Scarf – red)

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Ye Pirate Xmas


photoshop

Slight departure from the tangible here.

For the last decade or so, Madam and I have had themed Christmasses (Roman, Horror, Viking, Bollywood amongst others) and it’s my job to produce an e-post for friends and family announcing the theme. So, here’s this year’s Work of Photoshop for the Pirate Xmas we’ve just enjoyed; Madam, myself, and Viv the cat placed in N.C. Wyeth’s cover illustration for Treasure Island.

As far as the painting has been concerned recently, I’ve been catching up on the Big Wood painting in progress, preparing a couple of larger canvasses and a figure composition to do on one of them, and drawing people out the front window (I’ll post some of these soon - they’re quite interesting), till Xmas took over. Back to the grindstone of pigment and binder in the New Year, and wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous One.

Aaaarr

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Beech Leaves


oil on canvas 51x41cm

Quite a tough subject, and it took a few days longer than anticipated.

The different shapes and colours of this mass of leaves was a very interesting texture. I wasn’t sure if a pile of leaves on its own would have a strong enough structure, so I put them in a box. And then added the pair of manikins. After a few days, I realised that the leaves and box would have been fine without the figures, but by then it was too late to remove them. I suppose a narrative could be constructed around them, but they are an unnecessary element.

I used focus to describe the complex mass of leaves, and there is a big difference between the paint handling of the front leaves and those towards the rear. At the front they are quite sharply drawn, with thicker paint, and at the back the paint gets thinner and more blurred. If I’ve done it right, you should be able to cover one eye and experience depth and solidity.

It’s the first concentrated piece of work since August and I’m really happy to have done it, even though it was quite a hard slog. But then again, that’s what it’s all about.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Sketch of Three Trees


17x21cm pencil

It’s not a great concentrated study, but the most important thing about this little sketch is the fact that I’ve done it. It’s the first proper work I’ve done since developing a deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism while visiting Madam’s family in USA at the end of August.

This is maybe not the place for the story of the diagnoses and trip back, let’s just say that I’m happy to be home, it’s safe now, and I’ll be taking a daily dose of warfarin for the next few months. When it was painful I had no concentration (I couldn’t get more than a four-letter answer on Countdown), and it is still too uncomfortable to work at an easel, even sitting down. I am meant to walk a mile or so every day, and have been looking about at the autumn changes, though nothing tangible has come from it.

Until last Friday that is, when I saw these trees up the road in Merchiston Park. I photographed them, then got out my trusty sketchbook and actually STOOD for twenty-five minutes to do a quick drawing, waggling my DVT leg and taking most of my weight on my good one. Really pleased that I’d actually done something, however raw.

I think the three separate trees make an interesting group, and I like the flat spiral movement rising around the trunks from the lower left to the top right. The front tree’s cut-off branch opens an abrupt space, and makes an incomplete rhyme with the visible branches of the other two trees, some of which are obscured and cut off by other forms. I like how the trees’ movement is complimented by the road and pavement. This rising and falling curve from left to right, towards the viewer, is reinforced in rectangles by the walls and hedges.

The drawing works reasonably well and I’m quite pleased with the directional pencil strokes differentiating each tree’s foliage. Although the sketch is simple, and very selective, the image has a lot of potential. To make a painting from it I would have to solve some background problems and decide what to do with the crucial right area. But that’s for a little later.

In closing, I would like to point out that ‘Countdown’ is a well-known mid-afternoon TV show broadcast on C4, in which a pair of very, very clever contestants form words from the nine random consonants and vowels picked by one of them.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Sycamore Leaf


oil on card 17x20cm

Putting the old wipes from the last painting out into the bins, I looked down and saw this early dropper on the damp pavement. I really liked its grey-greens and pinks.

I tried out a walnut oil painting medium on this one. Walnut oil is far more mobile than linseed and is very responsive under the brush. Its downside is that it takes a little longer to dry, but this can be improved by mixing it with damar varnish. This medium will dry enough overnight to take a second layer, but retains its working qualities longer than a linseed medium, which gets very tacky surprisingly quickly. Altogether, this small painting took about eight hours – an afternoon to lay in the heavier stuff, and part of the following day to tighten up and modify with thinner layers.

The more I looked at the leaf, and my image of it, the more it appeared to have female aspects, both physically and on another level. I quite like the idea of the leaf having a rush of sensuality as it decomposes and breaks down into fertile elements for the next cycle, and of the ‘fig leaf’ suggesting what it’s meant to hide.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Block Plane


oil on canvas 51x41cm

This is the same block plane as in last month’s ‘Three Watercolours’, but a lot bigger and using oil paint. Finished last Thursday.

The painted image is about three times the actual size of the subject and the set-up presented a few problems. The plane and the canvas were both just over 2ft away - I had to make tape footprints on the floor and stand in them so as to keep my point of view constant. Everything was so close that I was able to dispense with my glasses (multi-focal plus a slight astigmatism) and work without the distortions that they sometimes produce. I quite enjoyed that for a change, but it did mean that my nose was almost on the canvas, and some of my initial drawing went a bit astray. I spent a day and a half rectifying that, which was annoying.

The palette is very limited – all the greys of the plane were made with burnt and raw umbers with ultramarine, and I used a tiny bit of yellow ochre and burnt sienna in the wedge. I used flake white in most of the initial work, and the thicker paint, and slightly boosted it with titanium white in the odd highlight. For the soft translucent washes of the paper towel I used the more transparent zinc white. As an experiment, I painted the acrylic priming with a good quality French Grey satin finish alkyd, which produced a very nice tone and texture to paint on, and should be fine for several or more decades.

As usual I was listening to old comedy on BBC Radio7 while painting, but I had recently come across Michael Nyman’s ‘Fish Beach’ and started each session with it. During the period of painting this, Madam and I were watching the final couple of series of ‘Six Feet Under’ every evening, which was quite intense. Very melancholy stuff.

Overall I’m quite pleased with this one; the size is just about right, the strokes are neither over-fussy nor slapdash, and, I managed to write about it without once alluding to its progress as being Plane Sailing.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Three Watercolours






watercolours 28x20cm

These slightly larger pieces were done over the last three days - the plant first, then the plane, and yesterday the sofa.

In the first one I was investigating the difference between the direct and translucent lights. Not bad, but the composition is a little indecisive on the right. The wee plane is a lovely object. It’s unique. The blade-securing mechanism broke very early on, and I made the wedge replacing it myself. I’ve had it for over thirty years and know it very well. The contrast of surfaces might suit an oil study some time. The red sofa is an ambitious attempt at a more complicated watercolour. I just managed to get it done before Madam returned from work; it’s where she usually sits for Tea and Telly. Some of the painting is a bit inconsistent - the table is dull and unconvincing - but I actually surprised myself with the painting of the cushions.

I think it was Gene Kelly who said that if it looks as though you’re working hard, you’re not working hard enough. I wish these were a little more clear and effortless (looking).

Friday, July 10, 2009

Cloud Study











watercolour 20x12.5cm

Back to watercolour studies as a break from the oily paint. This is the sky developing over about fifteen – twenty minutes from our front window. Done last week.

I finally went out and bought a couple of pads of proper watercolour paper. It’s not particularly heavy at 90lbs, but at least it won’t go brown. This is done on a pad made into a block. What you do is compress the pad slightly and (with a water-resistant glue!) stick strips of paper around the edges, leaving one corner free, to make a sort of parcel. As the top sheet is always attached to the rest of the pad, the water crinkling is considerably lessened. Once your sketch is dry, slip a blade into the non-glued corner and slice it from the block. It’s worth doing, as ready-made blocks are twice the price of pads.

Payne’s grey is a gift for northern skies, with a little touch of Burnt umber for the more opaque lower cumulus.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Light and Shades


oil on canvas 51x41cm

At last, a finished painting! I started composing this in April, and have been slogging at it, on and off, since the first week in May. The view is looking from York Place towards the Playhouse Theatre at the top of Leith Walk.

What I’m trying to deliver here are two themes in one painting. At first sight, the subject is a late afternoon cityscape in mid-winter. It’s about rich horizontal light and deep shadows, and only subsequently does the eye explore the figures in the lower half. While it works as a whole, we can still choose which facet to consider - the sunlit Upper storeys or the cold, miserable Underworld.

Figure composition was my big thing years ago, and this, a crowd of heads and shoulders, was quite a gentle re-entry into the genre. (At some point I’ll post up some of these older ones.) Technically, this painting is quite interesting. The crowd and gloomy lower area were first painted as in full daylight, and only when they were ‘finished’ was the bluish shadow overlaid. To separate the two aspects of the painting even more, the warm sunny areas were treated with a yellowish glaze of raw sienna. Great fun, and again, more like how I used to paint.

Having said that, though, I’m mildly annoyed that it’s on the smallish side. As soon as I had I finished ‘The Cutting’, I had realised (with some horror) that it should have been at least twice the size. I was eager to start work on this one, but my other current project (see Works in Progress) demanded the larger of the two suitable canvasses to hand. It does work at this size, but would have been better, bigger.

For those concerned with minutiae and have very good screen resolution, the fictitious show depicted as playing at the Playhouse is ‘ТОЛПА’ (tolpa), which adds a little to the whole as it is the Russian word for ‘a crowd, throng’.

As if you didn’t know that already.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Rapid Sketches


This montage is a small selection from my pile of quick sketch sheets done sitting in front of the TV. The object is to improve rapid drawing.

I usually sit down with a pile of cut sheets of lining paper or a clipboard with a plain loose-leaf pad and rip through them using pencil, pen, or a single colour of watercolour/ink. It’s not Great Art, but amongst the miserable scribbles there can be some useful sketches, and it certainly expands your vocabulary (I think there’s an Ice Road Trucker or two in there somewhere).

Strictly speaking, these are not finished work, but seeing as how I’m working through a bit of a drought (horrible feeling), I haven’t finished anything recently.

Well, if it’s nothing else, it’s a fair attempt to justify sitting on my fat sofa watching telly.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Dried Leaves


oil on card 31x22cm

Nature moves a lot faster than I paint. I had intended this to be a quick one-day painting, but got caught up in the complex dead leaves. I spent a whole second day on them, and by the time I got around to detailed painting of the green living leaves, they were completely different! A new leaf had sprung up and the others had moved round. I waited about a week till the growth cycle put them in similar positions, but missed it, and now all the foliage has shifted. Doh.

It would have been quite interesting to explore the contrast between the living and the dead matter further, but there’s enough about the green leaves and how everything sits in space to let it go now. So, it not being worth it, I think I’ll just leave it. Having said that, I’m quite pleased with how I’ve done the mass of hard, dry bits, and that’s got to be a Good Thing.

Next time, the green stuff gets done first.

Friday, April 24, 2009

The Cutting


oil on canvas 41x51cm

This is a view I saw from the bridge at Braid Avenue. The isolated lookout was looking east along the track while the rest of his maintenance gang was working the rails to the west. The whole scene seemed about exposure to danger.

I have tried to increase the unsettled feeling by narrowing the cutting, emphasising the unstable ‘V’ at the centre of the composition, and making the trees loom over the empty track. Most of the shadows are deepened using transparent glazes.

This is quite a potent picture in which to explore levels of meaning. On the face of it, it’s just a bloke beside a railway line with some trees. There may or may not be a train due. Now, are the trees as stable as they should be? Could he be more in danger from them than the oncoming (or not) train? Let's go deeper, are the trees, the whole landscape, animate? Do they know something he doesn’t? Shouldn’t he leave? If we look closer, we could see one of the trees as looking a bit human. If we are familiar with the story of Daphne, we could read this little shriek of a tree as the nymph metamorphosed. But here she is abandoned and alone, and Arcadia has become cold and harsh. This is not how Paradise should be. What has our hero in the hard hat stumbled upon? Could this be a metaphor for our own times? For the Human Condition is General? You can take it as far as you can support it.

It not all Doom and Gloom though. I learnt a lot about paint handling, though the drawing could probably be bit better, and working within a very narrow tonal range. As it happens, over the time I was doing this I became reacquainted with Frank Zappa’s ‘One Size Fits All’, and couldn’t paint for a while for giggling after hearing Evelyn, the modified dog, ‘as she viewed the quivering fringe of a special doily’.

(‘Arf’, she said.)

Though you really had to be there.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Watercolour Sketches


watercolour

This is a compilation of watercolour sketches done over the last couple of days. 1 and 2 on Wednesday, 3, 4, and 5 on Thursday (much sunnier Spring weather).

Number 1 was the first serious watercolour I’d done for years, and its mediocrity and cramped style are rather disappointing. It fails to convey either accurate information about the forms, or the sense of light and space which watercolour does best. It’s also on really rubbish paper. I did the fir tree immediately after the first effort, deciding to look harder, draw from the shoulder, and let the water do more of the work. The light in 3 was gagging for watercolour, I really didn’t have to work hard to see the limited palette and simplified forms. In 4 and 5 I was looking to use it for recording skies. 4 is in my sketchbook, hence the crinkles, and the rest are on cheap off-white lining paper. Quite a good exercise, and I’ll definitely be doing more, though I really should fork out for some proper paper.

Here I have to admit, again, to a grudging use of pthalo blue. I had to go to the shops for a pie late morning, and got a student grade tube of Intense Blue. Tried it out in 4, and, shock, realised it doesn’t granulate (like the blue in 3). It’s lovely to work with, as long as you keep it un-Intense and on a leash.

I think back with (slight and momentary) guilt to the 1970’s, and all those drawings I did of people’s houses with grainy, mottled ultramarine skies.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Cloud sketch


oil on paper 21x12.5cm

I sat down by the kitchen window on Monday to sketch cloud forms as they flitted past. It’s impossible to paint a particular cloud, as they change so quickly and my memory isn’t photographic. This is just one exercise to get more acquainted with the vocabulary of clouds, so what you have here are shapes and tones painted over about an hour.

As it happens these are ragged stratocumulus late on a bright windy afternoon.

The paper has several coats of acrylic primer, with a little blue acrylic paint added. I’ve mixed up a whole batch of this, and have a few blank skies prepared already for when the sky gets extra interesting again. Although there’s no tone change in the blue background I think it’s a good system for sketching, though the initial wipe of turpentine/oil mix, for fluidity, means that the oil paint takes ages to dry. I’ve used titanium white, not my usual flake/lead white which would dry much quicker, even with the extra oil. For sheer whitening power it’s really the only choice for this type of work, especially on a coloured background. The two other colours used are Payne’s grey and ultramarine.

The blue tinting in the primer is pthalocyanine. Even in the weakened student product it is a ruinously powerful pigment, and can infect a whole palette if not carefully contained. In this case, it is safely quarantined in a base layer, in a different medium from my active paint, so hopefully nothing horrific is going to break out. In fact I think it does the job here quite well.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Two Life Drawings



conte crayon

Two drawings from Tuesday. I had been getting a little frustrated with my linear style, and made a conscious decision to be loosen up a bit and use the conte crayon more tonally. This involves a bolder, less hesitant, smudge and erase technique, which seems to have made a difference.

In the leaning pose (twenty minutes) there’s light bouncing around all over the place. The dark areas behind the figure really free up the use of light and dark to describe how the light falls on the figure.

The upright pose (one hour) is maybe less immediate and more controlled. I probably should have made more of the ‘dark surround trick’, but then that may have scuppered the impact of the hair. Perhaps this should be cropped to just the head and shoulders. The drawing that is, not her hair.

An interesting thing about Conte crayon is that it was invented because the Napoleonic wars prevented imports of graphite from Britain. The main source of drawing quality graphite was a deposit in Cumbria, discovered in about 1500, and developed during Industrial Revolution. This explains why a lot of pencils – Derwent, Cumberland, Lakeland - have names associated with the Lake District, which had puzzled me for a time. The baked Conte crayon process was invented by a Monsieur Conte, in Paris. Quelle Surprise!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Blue Flash


oil on card 23x17cm

Painted over last Thursday and Friday, and the grey background consolidated on Monday morning.

One of my plimsolls, a Dunlop Blue Flash, has been worn so long that it has come apart at the outside edge. This has revealed a pink plastic construction strip, which looks a bit like the gums in a cat or dog’s mouth. I like the difference between the clean fresh gum, the dense blue of the inside, and the dry, worn textures of the rest of the shoe.

This has turned out well, but on the first day, I got too zoned in on the laces, and when Madam saw it she thought it looked like a kid’s shoe. Solved it the next morning when I woke up and realised that I’d had a shift in scale between the eyelets and the rest of it, a bad thing. Children’s shoes use standard eyelets, and appear much larger, so I had to overpaint my (devastatingly-good-but-no-one–will-ever-know) rendering of giant eyelets. Serves me right for not concentrating.

I would like to point out that I have much better shoes to wear than this.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

George Square


oil 25x31cm

Finished yesterday, this is a view of the back of George Square from the Swedish Café on Middle Meadow Walk.

Reasonably happy with this, though I had a problem with some of the upper clouds. Solved it by A) Listening to some Philip Glass solo piano, and B) Abandoning the damar/oil medium, which got too sticky too quick, and resorting to a basic turps/oil mix for the blended area. It’s really tedious having to re-learn these things again.

So much for the technology, here’s the interesting stuff about the composition. The painting is about the stack extending from the hard, heavy mass of the buildings into empty space. So, I’ve made the painting very stable and bottom heavy. The canvas is upright to broadly echo the vertical stack, which stands alone against a plain untextured background.

I liked the idea of the window groups of three, two, and one. The single has the most complex shape, and is the most interesting in that it’s slightly open and right next to the stack. They are tweaked to sit on different levels so that, reading from the left, they form a shallow arc dipping then curling up to the chimney. This ‘curve’ is set against the rectangular nature of the building shapes and their textures. The movement is reinforced by the shapes of the trees and the sloping, then rising, forms of the two cumulus clouds behind. The whole thing was composed with photoshop, which lets me test compositional ideas from photographs very quickly.

I really enjoyed painting this, especially the stack. Which makes sense, seeing as how that was what grabbed my attention away from the hot chocolate and pastry in the first place.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Two Life Drawings





conte crayon

Tuesday morning is Life Drawing morning, and I’m pleased enough with a couple of yesterday’s efforts to put them up.

Our model yesterday was great to draw, and gave us really interesting poses. Even better, she was able to keep them, especially the difficult ones.

The kneeling pose was on for half an hour, and it’s about mass and weight (as I suppose most figure drawing should be). I quite like the difference between working the load-bearing parts and slung belly, and the economical lines of her resting feet.

The standing figure was a warm-up pose. The model struck up this dancer’s position, with her arms out, and kept them like that for the full ten minutes. It was a quick drawing and I kept the chalk moving quite quickly and lightly, not erasing, but correcting with a second or third line. This, with the delicacy of the pose, has produced a very ethereal, animate drawing.

I am so glad that I was told about these sessions (WASPS at Patriothall 9.30am-12.00, £5). They start off with quick five or ten minute warm-up poses, followed by maybe a couple of longer ones. After a break for a cuppa and biscuits, there’s either two half-hour or one hour-long pose. It’s a community, not an educational, project, run by members, and the space is let from WASPS.

The awful thing about not drawing seriously for 15-20 (going on 30) years is that you just… go… off. It’s not so much the mechanical manipulation of the medium that dulls, it’s the mental skill of looking and examining. Prior to starting at WASPS last autumn, the last time I had drawn a model in a studio was in 1977, and I was appalled to find that I really didn’t know where or how to start. My first new drawings really weren’t very good, and were more about bluff and aesthetic effect than gathering and conveying information. Hopefully, the more I exercise my ‘Looking Muscle’ the more effective I’ll be, and once I’ve achieved fitness I must never, ever let that drop again.

…but it is very, very difficult.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Geranium


oil on card 15x20cm

Quick direct painting, done in a day last week, and now dry enough to scan. I felt I had to give it another layer of the olive, or French, grey, as the first layer was way too thin. The texture was similar to that of the blue pot - far too busy and distracting - and the geranium was completely lost.

Incidentally, this is in our front room, where the walls are French grey (BS4800 code 10 B 21, available from all good decorating outlets). It’s a dull colour in itself but it boosts anything you put against it.

I think the strokes and marks are effective, but the composition itself is maybe a bit flawed; there’s too much going on the left, leaving an absence up in the top right corner. It would have been better to turn the plant so that it faced right, heading into the top corner. But then I didn’t think of that at the time.


What I do like about it is the difference between the light, green leaves and the crumbly dry dead ones, and really enjoyed painting that contrast.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Maranta


pencil, about 18cm wide

Quick drawing of a plant done in the last hour after a painting day.

The healthy open leaves have come out not badly, but the light ran out before I had pinned down the dried out-shrivelled ones.


Quite a good exercise in tone and organic forms.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Portrait exercise - An Ex-Soldier


oil on card 15x20cm

This is a quick one-day piece done last week from a photo in an Observer magazine. Now dry enough to scan.

It’s a bit of a breakthrough piece for me. I had decided to spend a far greater proportion of time on looking and checking before applying any paint, and as a result, my drawing here was much more accurate and informative.

It seems as though my ‘looking muscle’ is showing signs of its former fitness. Still a lot of hard work to do, but at least this little sketch was a bit of a reward on the way.

The subject is Duane Telfer, who served in the British Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, where he suffered a nervous breakdown after his friend and colleague was mortally wounded and died in front of him.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Window and Floccus


oil on canvas 25 x 31cm SOLD

Some inner debate as to whether this is finished or not. The earthbound bits are blocked in quite heavily, while the airy elements are progressively applied in thin blended layers. Finally decided not to take the buildings any further.

This painting was always going to be about the clouds, with the odd angles of the window and roofs purely providing a heavy base.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Tank and Teapot


oil on canvas 51x51cm

This painting was finished in December, so this is me catching up a bit.

I was getting a bit fed up with a palette of blues and buffs and wanted to get to grips with a good blaze of red. In this particular case a strong light red with a touch of alizarin crimson layered on with loads of medium. Very glossy, but very rich, and quite enjoyed doing it, though had a bit of trouble telling how the horizontal creases around the tank work.

The tank itself is a plastic model of a Panther tank I made years ago, with the camouflage lushed up a bit. The teapot is part of a full tea-set. It has an almond section, not round, reminiscent of the 15th century breastplates designed to deflect blows, in the same way that the sloping armour of this tank was designed to deflect anti-tank rounds. Incidentally, for those who care, the colour of the teapot is just about the same as ‘Panzer Grey’, the factory finish of German tanks up to about 1942. Which is a coincidence.


There is, of course, an overall similarity in the two shapes, with smaller echoes within them. Their functions, whether one reads the tank as a small model, or as a huge, noisy, dangerous machine, are entirely different.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Roofs - Gilmore Place


oil on primed paper


oil on card

Two quick oil sketches out the window on Tuesday afternoon, tarted up and tidied a bit the next morning.
The darker one highlights the trouble I'm having with verticals just now, but I'm quite happy with the tonalities. Personally I blame my multi super-duper focals; even though they're quite weak they still distort a bit. Either that or I simply have to pay more attention to drawing.
These are actually small enough to scan. That saves such a lot of mucking about with the camera and making presentations from photos.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Observatory Road


oil on canvas 56x36cm

Finished this morning.

Slightly recomposed view just about to turn down into Blackford Avenue.

Took a while to do - got my spaces slightly confused - and the tree edges COULD be little looser, still, there we go.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

TREE - Grange Road


oil on hardboard 23x20cm


First post, and hoping to keep this up.

So, this is a tree that struck me during summer.

I'll fill in the recent paintings AND some of the older ones as we go along, possibly accompanied by nice photos of clouds.