And relax

This is pretty much finished apart from the usual set of glazes which go over the top - deepening shadows, bringing out highlights etc. But before I do that the varnish needs to dry. And while that's happening, i'll put the undercoat down for another one and go for a walk.

It's sunny out, i'm thinking i'll make the dinner tonight, something proper. Here's some shots. Taken in daylight but i'm still not happy with them, the camera seems to oversaturate everything. I may need a new one. But you can get the general impression.





there's a little glare from the varnish which makes the shadows seem a bit washy...

I'm going to try, somehow to get a scan. I'm not sure how. In any case I am very happy with the direction it's going in.

RE: Comments in last post - *Apparently* our summer is coming back in August? I heard a weather lady say it....It's got a few days left then ;)

Make one up

Seems like it’s been a long time since I last posted. I’ve been off work for 2 weeks mainly for the purpose of producing some work. Actually, I was meant to finish some work, but that’s not really how it works. I do have something to finish

I haven’t touched it though – it is swallowing all of my time with endless glazes, so I needed to move onto the next one and let that rest for a bit.

I won’t give too much away, but it’s another fox.



I built a new frame from olde clock parts for it and it looks lovely and beaten up. And hopefully it will be finished in the next day or so – I’ll post high quality photos (hahahah!) if it is.

Meawhile, outside the summer continues, in an offy/onny kind of way. You can be walking in a balmy sticky heat one minute and then be in a wintery gale the next. It makes dressing very difficult. Generally you end up wet in any case. Can't complain though, everything is growing like wild-fire. The rose bush clinging to the front wall is bowing under the weight of all the blooms.

And I have to put up with this lazy little blighter. Look at him, I haven't seen a days work out of him for months.

Covered in carbon

The painting is getting better - layers of oil - lovely.

Another drawing.

Sneak a peek

I'm not sure why I always take premature, badly lit photos of what i'm working on - I should probably just wait till i'm finished, but i'm a blabber mouth. I like rabbiting on and constant analysis :)

The angle is squinty, I couldn't be bothered trying to prop it up properly (I've been going running recently and whatever tolerance I once had for late night photographs is completely gone)

There are many things wrong with it, and there's loads more to go. Lots of bees and butterflies, and several beautiful flowers I found pictures of will be painted around the base.

I will say about this piece that it's been reworked so many times you can see raised lines in the paint of old leaves, ex-flowers, null & void petals. But now I feel like I have a base to work with, rather than a big mess which I can't seem to pull together :)

A bit more

Another drawing. This a more detailed part of the very large painting I have on-hold just now...She is one of the people riding their animals through the forest...I realised part way through that i'd seen an arrangement similar to this before here

Quick Update

Hello there! Thanks all for the feedback on the last post. I appear to be gradually getting the hang of larger painting. Progress is slow but i'm getting used to the pace, it's not ready to show even progress shots yet but soon hopefully.

I got a wee bit tired of working on the same thing yesterday so I started drawing. I was always, really, a better drawer than a painter, but I abandoned it as a final medium when I was forced out of it by my art college teacher.

It is often seen, or certainly it was there, as a secondary art form. I never saw it that way then but I was a little brainwashed afterwards. In any case, since I can't possibly hope to produce a body of paintings in time for September, so my plan is to produce as many drawings as I can...I hope some will make it into paint eventually.

Soft Force

It's all the little things

So, it turns out (following on from my last post) that going bigger with a painting is a bit more complex than just making a bigger picture and filling in the gaps. It is a different kind of discipline altogether. I thought i'd post about some of the issues/solutions i've found so that maybe some of you other painters will be able to avoid my mistakes, or be kind enough to offer me some handy tips?

The first thing, which should have been obvious but which I overlooked is - need more paint.


Also, I knew that when you go larger you have to step away a lot, but I hadn't really factored it in as a habit. So I was kinda hit in the face with this fact, after lovingly painting the shadows and contours of a leaf for half the day and stepping back from it only to realise it did not work at all in terms of its surroundings. It is frustrating, after previously being able to work on something solidly to have to break your concentration to stand up periodically *

On that same note, painting with small brushes and building up shadows with tiny cross-hatched strokes wasn't working out either. I have now repainted over my original base and started to do very rough shapes of light and shade, not really caring about the details so much. I'll have to care about them later of course, but details to begin with were just terrible idea, especially when I had to paint over them all and felt awful that i'd invested so much time in them.


I realised I need quality bigger brushes as well. I have a lot of very good tiny brushes and one or two dejected larger brushes. So since I had some money burning a hole in my pocket - and since I was feeling frustrated with progress - I went to the art store and bought the most expensive paint brush i've ever owned. A large, flat, part-sable brush which is absolutely beautiful and worth it's weight in gold.


It holds paint better, it is incredibly soft and it never really disturbs the paint beneath even if that's still drying, it paints in even consistent strokes, there's never any unfortunate globules or bubbles going on. The lesson learned here is that although a bad workman might blame his tools, a good workman doesn't use bad tools.

On that same point - I always wondered why I had such a hard time replicating colours exactly. It never occured to me that it might be another case of bad tools

The palette on the right is the one i've used since....well many years...I think it is aluminium or something and crusted with old paint that is fused to the metal now. The one on the left is one I picked up along with the brush. The crucial difference is that the new one is white and the sections are flat bottomed. I'm not sure why I didn't click on to this earlier, but now it seems obvious that having a palette which is a reflective material and has no flat surfaces is not really a very good idea.

Thanks all for excellent suggestions and comments on last post by the way. Every day i've been trying to study something, and I may try some life-drawing classes if I can find some which happen in the evening. Hope you all have a great weekend, i'm off to the hairdressers today (I'm frightened of them so wish me luck!). And also, it is stunningly hot here again, so i'll be doing a lot of walking around...I can barely wait.

If any of you have any tips for me about painting large then I would greatly appreciate hearing them!

*I managed a nifty solution to checking from a distance which doesn't involve standing up and breaking your concentration. I always have a mirror handy in any case (for checking a painting in reverse) and if you hold it at arms length you can check the painting from a distance much more easily (depending on the size of your image you could also position one behind you so that you could just turn round and check it)