Dinan from the Tower

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12 x 10 in  -  30 x 25 cm     Watercolor    

This painting is another from our recent visit to France. I think it just about comes off.

Painted, as normal, back home in the studio.

Street in Dinan

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12 x 10 in  -  30 x 25 cm     Watercolor    

We have been away fro a few nights staying in Dinan (Brittany, France). We had a cabin for the overnight crossing a very pleasant way to do the trip.

Visit this link if you want see the trip photos.

I painted this back home. It's a sort of, in the studio, quick sketch.

Lenny

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14 x 10 in  -  36 x 25 cm     Watercolor

Just back from a Week of Painting with John Yardley at Dedham Hall.

I was most pleased with this painting of fellow course mate, Lenny.

Kersey - Down the Hill

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14 x 10 in  -  36 x 25 cm     Watercolor    

Here is another from my week at Dedham.

This was done 'en pleine aire' I had roughly the view you can see in the photo.

Pinmill Derelicts

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     Here is the final sample from my week away.

There was a strong wind when we were at Pinmill so I hurried back to the studio and painted the scene form my computer screen.

Uplifted Face

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7 x 9 in  -  18 x 23 cm     Watercolor     This was a quick try at doing something for a portrait thread on PaintingFriends.com.

I was trying to work in a Charles Reid style, doing nearly everything in as near to a one touch as you can get. Strong darks with control, go in once. I find it very hard, which is why there are very overworked areas. However taken as a whole it is clearly going in the direction I wanted.

The reference is curtsey of the MorgueFile.

Bicycle in the Snow

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10 x 13 in  -  25 x 33 cm     Watercolor    

Painted for a two hour challenge on PaintingFriends.com it does not look too bad. The challenge is to pick and then paint a white subject from a small set of reference photos.

As aways there is a two hour max time limit. Of course with this style of painting I was well within that, comming out at bit over an hour.

The ref I picked comes courtesy of the Morguefile.

High Key Araf

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14 x 10 in  -  36 x 25 cm     Watercolor

Araf is a colleague. Very photogenic and with a great smile. I hoped to catch the smile in the painting and I think I have. The rest of the picture has tuned out a bit more high key than I was planning for.

Well at least I get a few marks for effort.

Reflection on the Thames

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14 x 10 in  -  36 x 25 cm     Watercolor    

This quick quarter sheet painting was done as a demo for an article on reflections that can be found at PaintingFriends.com

I took this reference in late autumn in the early evening the sun as a way to my right and so the fronts of the houses that face the river are glowing in the sunlight.

Color Arches

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8 x 11 in  -  20 x 28 cm     Heavy Body Acrylic     While this was done as a two hour challenge it was also done as a bit of fun. A side brief was to attempt to use a lot of colour.

This is a reference kindly supplied by Desiree.

Garden Rose

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watercolor     This was done for a two hour chalenge on PaintingFriends.com.

I don't think I quite managed to pull it together on this one. I can't decide whether the dark background should have been reduced or increased it certainly is one of those paintings that looks better as a smaller image.

Many thanks to Desiree for the use of the reference image here.

Desiree's Paradise

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9 x 7 in  -  23 x 18 cm     Heavy Body Acrylic    

This was done in around 50 minutes for a 2 hour challenge set at PaintingFriends.com.

This is the Ref supplied and show here with kind permission of Desiree.

I have very little skill at using heavy bodied acrylics, but you won't get anywhere if you don't make an effort to improve. One exercise I did while trying to paint this was that of counting the strokes.

I painted background prior to starting the count. After that you count every stroke you make. The idea is to train yourself, in a medium in which you are trying to show the strokes of the brush, to only paint strokes that do something that have a purpose.

I painted this with 179 strokes, not counting the background.

Fat Pegion

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9 x 7 in  -  23 x 18 cm     Liquid Acrylic    

Done for a two hour challenge. I think I have to admit that this one is not a success. It was the first outing of some newly purchased liquid acrylics. While they act like watercolour I was unable to mix colours to form the darks I am used to mixing.

This is the reference, it is actually one that I took in Italy earlier in the year.

The reason why I am showing this failure here is because I have come to realise that if you only show your successes the pressure becomes far too great. Much better to be honest to oneself and the audience and show that not everything comes out quite as it should.

Maggiore Reflections 2

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8 x 11 in  -  20 x 28 cm     Acrylic     This was done as part of a two hour challenge. It is in acrylic and to be honest I'm not that pleased with it. I should have been more particular when painting the sky. The brushstrokes I are good idea but I should have been far more thoughtful as to what blues and what whites got placed where.

I should then have continued the same stroke pattern on the building then it might have had a better outcome.

This is the reference slightly cropped from the original. Taken on Lake Maggiore in April this year.The challenge used one of my own references taken on Lake Maggiore few months ago. I did a watercolour of the same view a few paintings back.

Thumbs Up - Cuban Style

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10 x 14 in  -  25 x 36 cm     Watery Acrylics    
This is painted with acrylic paints. I don't have any liquid acrylics so I watered down some normal thick acrylic paint. I found that none of the colours I had treated in this way would make a good darks. So I was forced to try to add some of my darker colours like black.

Not surprisingly this has contributed to the rather murky and to the rather murky darks. This is the classic reason why beginner watercolourists are urged not to use black. It's not that black is a bad colour is just that, when used in mixes, it is seldom successful.

The reference was taken in November 2006. One of the things you notice when you visit Cuba is that it is a black country ruled by whites.

Of course the official statistics say blacks are in the minority but how many statistics from the Cuban Ministry of information would it be sensible to believe.

Adendum
There is a close up of the thumb, which is the part I am most pleased with.

After all that is the subject of the picture.