A Paintings Progress....

Here's how I got on painting outside the Gallery this afternoon.   I occasionally start of a painting with good intentions of recording the process as I go and then as I get into it I get so absorbed that I forget to take the photos but today I managed at least a few.   I'm not sure how others go about painting street scenes but this seems to be the approach I've developed for myself so far...

I often start of by sketching out the basic composition with a pastel pencil.   I like to use these as they are relatively quick and I can make adjustments easily,  plus if the whole composition looks wrong the whole lot will wipe out in an instant.  I tend to pick a colour and tone that I think won't be to obtrusive when I start to add paint.

Sky and a couple of buildings in the distance then I remembered that it would probably be easier if I worked from left to right to save smudging bit I'd just painted.

I didn't manage to get these two uni-cyclists in so a snap had to suffice.  They even managed to film each other on their way back!

You'rs truly in action,  Thanks to Anna for taking this shot of me.

And this was more or less how far I got by the end of the afternoon until the rain started and as I'd forgotten to bring an umbrella and couldn't get anymore paint to stick to the wet board I called it a day.   I'll have to pop back another day or finish from one of my photos.

Exhibition Time!

We had a fantastic start to my exhibition yesterday at the Miss Annabel Dee Gallery, 153 Leigh Road.  There was a great turn out for the private view and I had five paintings sold by the end of the afternoon so I was very happy all round.   Thanks to everyone who came along and made it a great afternoon!

Rayleigh Highstreet

 

 

I finished this sketch today of Rayleigh High street during my lunch hour which I'd started last year.

It was lurking in the very last page of my last sketch book so I was pleased to finally get it finished.  Here are the stages....

 

 

A few sketches from the last couple of weeks...

 

 

Here's a few cars on the way to Cambridge on the M11. 

 

 

A & E waiting room

 

We  then  managed to clock up another trip to Southend Hospital the week before last when my son was admitted for an operation when an abscess had developed on his arm.

 

 

Lyndon in bed

 

 

Red and Lyndon playing games on the ipad

 

 

 

Lyndon reading.

 

 

Yesterday I got out and sketched around Westcliff Terrace where I'd like to do a bit of painting in the near future if possible.

And lastly a sketch from Shoebury common Beach today.

The models apprentice!

Here's my offerings from our Friday evening  life drawing session at the community centre this week. This week our model asked if her friend could model too which made for a really interesting session.   I've never tried or really had the opportunity to paint two models at the same time before.   Above are my 1 minute warm up sketches. and below  30min sketches in Oils.   I must say I usually find it a real challenge to just get enough paint on the board for one model in 30 min let alone two and as you can see I only really managed it on the second study.

 

 

 

This third one made for a lovely pose with the models back to back but unfortunately only managed to get a couple of marks in for the model in the background in the last minute.  I'm going to have to cut some longer boards as well as I really can't work small in a hurry!

 

 

The Fracture Clinic waiting room

The Fracture Clinic Waiting room Southend Hospital

Oil on board 6"x6"

 

I painted this one from a sketch I did on an early morning visit to the hospital when I was having a few problems with my leg.  

London Gateway Commission - sketches

 

London Gateway Sketches

 

4 @ A5 Line and wash images created from photos  by Andrew Bowen.

 

The team at London Gateway wanted four "sketches" to accompany the painting I wrote about last week.  They asked me to base my sketches on photos they supplied by Andrew Bowen.     In the end I thought the best way to work the sketches would be to use line and water colour wash.   When sketching I usually use fine liner  and Tom Bow wash pens but as the latter aren't light fast I thought it would be better to use watercolours instead.  

 

 The images to follow show the process of how I went about creating them.

 

I normally go straight in with fine liner pens but as these images were all very complicated and all needed to fit into an  A5 format I decided I'd better approach them more as small paintings.   I started by drawing an  A5 border within my sketch book and gridded up the photos and then marked the grid points on the edges of the A5 sketch borders.   I then sketched out all the main features in pencil. You can see some of this showing in places in the above drawing where I've started to add pen line work.

 

Line work completed and now ready to add the watercolour wash.

 

This image shows the pencil under drawing and below with the fine liner pen work  added and the pencil work erased.

 

A recent commission for the team at London Gateway

 

Tim Halhead at London Gateway

Oil on canvas

24" x 18"

I though I would write a bit about this one which is a commissioned piece I completed just before Christmas.   It was commissioned by the Team at London Gateway as a retirement present for Tim Halhead and was due to be presented to him this week.  I was also commissioned to make a few sketches to go with it which I'll show in another post.   The painting and sketches were all completed from a number of photos taken by Andrew Bowen.   To following images show how I developed the painting from day to day.

 

The day before I was due to meet to discuss the commission I broke my leg.  This gave me a whole new challenge of having to work out how to paint from my sofa which became an improvised studio and I mostly painted with the canvas on my lap or used my good leg as an easel!

The painting turned out to be one of the most detailed and complicated images I've taken on for a long time and the whole commission took me just under 14 days to complete. I started off by staining the canvas to get rid of the white using an Acrylic wash.  I then gridded up the canvas and main photo and sketched out the composition using a grey pastel pencil.   I'd been asked to make the painting A2 sized.  In the end however I could only find a 24" x 18" canvas locally which turned out to be a good thing as it meant I had extra room at the bottom which allowed me to make the figure a bit larger.

 

 

Next came the under painting and sketching in the figure with a bit more definition.

 

 Here I've completed the under painting and started to work on the sky and details of the boat.  I started with the containers on the left then worked towards the right. This shot also shows the Terberg truck sketched out on the right which I'd been asked to include from another photo.

Completing the lettering at the back of the boat.

The background and the cranes are now all finished in this shot.  These I found difficult to paint as they were painted from a couple of different reference photos as was the figure.

A bit of re - drawing here to provide more definition in the figure.

 

 This shot shows the scale of the portrait with my index finger included as a comparison,   I've never attempted a likeness on this scale before! 

Here with the figure of Tim pretty much finished.

 

Freya and Indianna Old Leigh

Freya and Indianna at Old Leigh

 

Oil on board 10" x 12"

 

This one started as a demo piece for one of my classes last year when we went down to Old Leigh on a painting trip.   As you can see below I didn't get very far with it!   I'd taken a few photo's for my students to finish there paintings from so I decided to finish this one myself as well.  What I really love about Freya is the lovely yellow colour.  She's not usually moored up here so I didn't get the opportunity to go back and finish the painting on site.

Rayleigh Millenium clock and the high street

 

Rayleigh Millennium Clock and High Street

12" x 10" Oil on Board

 

I put a few finishing touches to this one a few days ago from memory.   Mostly working on the  figures and the foreground area.

 

I developed this one over the summer by painting in  20 min bursts at the end of my lunch breaks on Tuesdays.  I can't really remember exactly how many sessions it took but it was quite a few.   I think one problem with working in this way was that I found it difficult to get into the flow when I had to keep stopping and starting so I will probably just stick to quicker sketches with my pens as I find them more satisfying and then work on the paintings during longer painting sessions.