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!

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!