CHRISTMAS WISHES

Here is one of my original paintings I used for a Christmas card a few year's ago and still sent out one or two this year to art friends who had not received them in the past. These fresco angels were created with a palette knife and lots of acrylic paste to create the feeling of plaster peeling off an old church wall.

Originally, I thought I'd send you my Christmas Greetings using some photos this year... so I'll still do that and add these too ...........

This first one is a decoration I have created for our lounge to substitute for a Christmas Tree, as we are going to our daughters for the Christmas period. When the candle inside the snowman is lit, it makes a really pretty corner.
Here's another lounge decoration, two robins sitting on the hi fi equipment in front of one of the many windows along the long wall running through our lounge and dining room.

So I'll finish with HAPPY CHRISTMAS GREETINGS and every good wish for a happy and successful arty New Year.

WORK IN PROGRESS

After many weeks not painting any main work, I felt the need to get away from sketchbooks and practicing for Italy, so decided I needed a second acrylic work to pair with my AFTER THE RAIN on 76 x 61 cms canvas. I had a rummage through many references from my photos to previous paintings to get ideas and then just got out my varied acrylics from both Liquitex heavy and soft body to Liquitex ink, a one inch Pro Arte acrylic brush and simply wacked on diagonal streaks of blue and white paint across what might become the sky area. Then filled the area below in shades of blues, greens and naples, with a few ideas for distant trees and flower borders in the front.

To date it has arrived at this, by which time I had decided to soften the blue of the sky, use the same hue for irises in the foreground and reduce the width area of the left and right flower borders.

Working backwards, here are some images showing the transitions as I worked without any particular ref in mind, apart from the shapes of the tall hollyhocks on the left.

Here you can see the earlier darker more vibrant sky I obliterated and the wider borders I removed.

I think this was the first photo I took, simply to remind myself how I had begun.

Where it now takes me I have no idea after the best part of a week away, but it certainly contrasts well with the original painting I wish to pair it with shown below, which you may remember from a much earlier posting.

GRAND TOUR SKETCHES

Its been such bad weather that I put on a DVD of a programme called GRAND TOUR when the art critic Brian Sewell toured the cities of Italy. I stilled some of the scenes and sketched in the comfort of my lounge with my Schmincke watercolours.

Number one is of a group of people in a square with blue fountain and some columns - Brian Sewell is in the left bottom corner where you can just see his umbrella cum sun parasol.

This one was of a pretty corner in Vicenza - the people must have gone inside the pay the bill!!

Here's Brian - looking with my hand rather much younger - outside the steps of one of the many buildings he took us into.

Well, a bit of fun one afternoon getting practice trying to sketch people in street scenes.

IRIDACEAE PAINTINGS - in other words Irises!

Am currently working on an idea for a large piece on irises - that wonderful flower family Iridaceae. So am going over images of earlier work depicting irises, of which I thought you might like to see a selection.

This one is from a large tall canvas in acrylic showing the textured acrylic stone surround of a stainglass window with painted irises in the bottom window so that I could combine my two favourite genre - flowers and churches

This is the first of abstracted pieces framed as three individual squares alongside each other, in very thinned acrylic to create flowing washes.

.. and finally here is a panoramic line of different irises painted in acrylic on canvas, which you can see is not quite finished at this stage. After adding the stems and leaves on the right I added some soft lavender thin acrylic washes to the background creating more light to the left. Don't seem to have a photo in my archives of the finished piece but I remember it well. I still have the original pencil sketch in one of my panoramic watercolour books.

I am enjoying going through the archive photos of my earlier work with irises - and there are plenty more from watercolour botanical studies of flowers in my garden to acrylic decorative large pieces. Its amazing how often you can paint one flower species and yet create something entirely different every time.

Glad to say all three images will enlarge with a click.

LADIES THURSDAY GROUP

My Thursday afternoon meetings continue with the five ladies invited attending as and when they can. This week there was just Helen and Maggie working with me, so we had fun.

I continued with a sketch I had done the previous day with my Stabilo brown fineliner soluble pen on quattro square block watercolour. It was of a local Gardens during the summer with one of their wired sculptures. This time a heron by the water. My visitors were surprised to see me use both a water spray to dampen the washes and then add ground salt crystals to create the effect you can see mainly in the left hand side foliage. Needless to say, it is nowhere near completed.

Maggie fell for my two little Christmas robin ornaments I had set by the side of a cyclamen plant in a basket. She added the logs from her imagination and I've promised to turn them into Christmas cards for her with my computer and Publisher software.

Helen brought along three works that had never been fully completed and we discussed what they needed. There was an acrylic landscape with poppies in a field which she felt had too strong a green in the distant fields. A watercolour of tulips in one of my square vases that needed anchoring with the use of a shadow at the base and also some darks into the foliage and petals helped bring it more 3D and alive. The third one was of a Yorkshsire cottage she staid at on holiday that just needed some attention to the pathway to the door. Then in the last 15 minutes or so she just got out a size 10 brush some green and red watercolours and created this lovely study of the cyclamen - adding some salt to the leaves whilst they were still wet. All without any initial drawing. Charming.

I thoughoughly enjoyed our afternoon together - our work encouraged along by music playing and tea and coconut macaroons dipped in chocolate.

FEET AND HANDS

I thought I might practice sketching hands and feet and with the Italian trip in mind I started with my Sistene Chapel book and inevitably went to the famous God creating Adam Michelangelo painting on the ceiling.

Then I checked out lots of feet from various scenes in the chapel and came up with this selection

from angels, sibyls and prophets:

Then at the weekend on the front cover of the Telegraph Magazine was this photo of Elton John using his hands to speak! Simply had to have a try:

All done with my latest favourite Stabilo Brown (45) fine liner with water and a little Schmincke watercolour.

AUTUMN LEAVES

Philippa and Maggie joined me yesterday afternoon for a session of sketching and painting . Prior to their arrival I walked down to the river and along the common to collect some of the glorious autumn leaves from oak trees, sycamore, beech and others. Here are a selection of leaves I chose to paint - I am afraid they have scanned rather darker than they really are


.... and here are my watercolour interpretations sketched into my garden flower sketch book labelled 'Autumn leaves from my village' as I did not have such a variety in my own garden. I used the Daniel Smith palette that still seems to be going on and on, having put down the shapes with a water soluble graphite pencil.



Hope you are also enjoying this wonderful natural display of colours.