SALHOUSE CHURCH AUCTION

Towards the end of last year you may remember a post of a watercolour demonstration I did at our local gallery, where the owner had invited me in order to advertise my monthly workshops at his gallery open day. . I ran a raffle at the December workshop as a gift to my members and it was won by the kind lady who brought the dressing up clothes to the last workshop . This was the watercolour result, which I am showing so you can see how different the same subject can be depending on the media used and whether you want to achieve an exact likeness or experiment with the subejct.

1. Watercolour I have recently been invited to submit a piece of work for an auction to raise funds for a nearby village church fund. As I did not have much time, I thought I would use as a basis the 16" x 16" box canvas acrylic I had started at the gallery demonstration but never finished.

2. Acrylic version early stages Here is how I began to develop the original boxed in layers at the gallery, using thick impasto gesso primer to mark out the circular vase and lithe lady statuette, both of which reside in my lounge. Using acrylic I was able to simply play and use whatever colours I wanted. You can see I have marked out where the orchids will eventually be painted and thoughts of reflections and shadows at the base of the canvas.

3. Finished acrylic This is the finished piece, having softened the background with Liquitex aqua green mixed with white and acrylic matt gel medium, applied with a two inch soft sponge roller in two directions. (I think enlarging you will see the 'squared' effect this achieves). I also developed the orchid blooms from a pot growing in my lounge and worked on the surface of the vase. The final effect was to bring the rollered aqua colours down over the table to bring harmony to the whole piece.

It will be interesting to see how much it fetches at the auction on the 26th September.