ANOTHER MAGIC GARDEN PAINTING

As it seems such a long time since posting the sketch of the London Fireworks on the first day of the year, I looked round to find something to post. I've been working on some more MAGIC GARDEN pieces for a Spring show and dug out this VIEW OF THE TREES from my store cupboard to bring back to life.

I don't think you have ever seen this particular one I was not too pleased with, so I added lots of my gutta shiny glissening paint usually used on silk to give it some oomph and played with the treeline. I also took my own advice about 'more darks' and think the outcome is much improved.

please enlarge to see the effect of the shine.

NEW YEARS EVE LONDON FIREWORKS

Before Christmas I tracked down a company making hand made watercolour sketchbooks named 'handbookjournal co' on the internet and ordered two square 5.5 inch vermillion red covered hard books. I've been using one to find out how well they take water washes and whether you can paint both sides of a sheet without it going soggy or buckled. Hurrah! they are great, so I decided to keep one for my Italy trip and play with the other.

I took one on my visit to our daughters for Christmas and sketched a few scenes in the local pub we stopped at on our way over. Since being back have sketched a few buildings but this afternoon I decided to use some of the photos I took last night of the London Fireworks New Year Celebration we were all up late to see together on TV- as our grand children are staying with us. It was the best ever with music and fireworks working in unison. Here is a watercolour painting of a scene when the skies were all pinks against a silhouetted London skyline.

Wishing you all a very happy and successful NEW YEAR.

VIEW ACROSS THE BORDER

You may remember an earlier post at the beginning of December when I had started a second acrylic piece to go with my AFTER THE RAIN. Well, I have finished it choosing hollyhocks and irises as my main flowers, so maybe you'd like to check back and see how it started because here is the finished VIEW ACROSS THE BORDER:

In case it does not enlarge, I add some closeups of areas of the flower border.

I am pleased with the result and it makes a good contrast to the AFTER THE RAIN garden piece both 76 x 61 cms canvas. I have some moulding of a silvery bronze box frame about 4 cms wide and will ask David (local framer gallery owner) if he could use that for me.

Now I must work on my second MAGIC GARDEN 41 x 41 c ms to deliver all by the end of January to be transported to Normandy.

WISHING YOU ALL A VERY SUCCESSFUL AND HAPPY NEW YEAR.

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.