The boating lake at Southchurch Park, Southend, Essex, England.  A4 Size.   I sketched this one a week ago in our local park and then used the sketch and some photos I took as the basis for this painting which I painted as a demo for Boreham Art Circle.  The painting needs a bit more work to get it up to scratch but I think I'd quite like to move it on a bit.

Another little pic from our hols last week in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. My son and I sat and sketched this little alley way with the Old Baptist Church leaning in. We were joined by a very friendly cat that insisted on trying to drink our water colour water. In the end I improvised a cat bowl from a lid.

Driving to Tewkesbury

I thought I'd start using my blog again! It's been a wile ...

Here's a little sketch I did from the back of our car of my wife Red driving to Tewkesbury last week where we spent a few days on Holiday.

Water colour on brown craft paper sketch book with a bit of pastel added.   This year I've been trying out a few different sketching mediums.

Beach Huts in the Snow Christmas Card Design.

This was a nice little project for the weekend, creating a painting for this years Christmas card. For the last few years I've created a Christmas card from one of my paintings,   It always feels a bit more personal and hopefully a bit more special to be able to give one of my own cards to family, friends and my students at  Christmas time. I'd left it a bit late this year as I like to give cards out to all my students and as one of my classes was due to take a break for Christmas at the start of the following week I only had the weekend to come up with a design and print a few off.     I wanted to create painting that had a flavour of  Southend-on-Sea, the coastal town in which I live so I based my painting on a photo I took a wile ago back in 2013. We don't get much snow at all in our little corner of Essex so I had to rely on photos rather than going out on site for this one. As I wanted a few figures in the image I also had a trawl through my lap top for a few suitable reference images I could add in. I didn't quite get the painting finished in time for my Monday evening class but had enough completed to crop a section out of the middle which when I'd printed it up I was happy with.

The Technical stuff: If you're interested in seeing how the imaged developed stage by stage and what decisions I made on the way please read on...

I was feeling a bit rough at the weekend with a cold so I opted for the comfort of my sofa as a make shift studio for this one:

I started sketching out the design using a light grey pastel pencil.

I then used Acrylic paints to block in the main colours

And make a few marks where I thought the figures should go.

 After lunch I had another look and realised the beach huts were feeling a bit small in the painting so I zoomed in a bit and re painted them a bit larger and moved the figures over a bit.

A bit more work on the figures...

With the under painting completed I swapped to Oils which I feel a bit more comfortable with and changed the colour of the child's coat to vary it a bit.

The card blanks I had in stock were all square so I selected this section of the painting just to be able to print out a few cards for the evenings class I was about to teach but I rather liked them as a square cards so I  decided to stick with the shape.

Here's the finished painting which I completed in the studio.   Leigh Road from outside Miss Annabel Dee Gallery.  10" x 12" Oil on board, sold.

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!