In my experience it’s very rare for a painting just to “work” without many alterations and soul-searching as to what is wrong. Sometimes it pays to set the painting aside and come back to it some days later with a “fresh eye”, and sometimes looking at it in a mirror helps. It always takes a lot of stepping back away […]
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I am writing this on New Year’s Day 2021. Although we are all glad to see the back of 2020, it was a good year for my painting. With amazing weather as well as being confined to home, I spent much of the spring gardening. This didn’t allow me much time for painting, but I was able to tend, grow, […]
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This last spring I got particularly interested in painting birds and used both my favourite mediums: pastel and oil. During the late spring, summer and early autumn months I did very little painting as the garden took over all my time and creative abilities, and when I did try to paint nothing seemed to go well. I now have a […]
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2018 wasn’t a very productive year for me as far as painting goes. We moved house in the spring, which was very time consuming, and a great deal of the rest of the year was spent designing, preparing and planting a garden. This nourished my creativity so I did not feel the need to be painting too much. […]
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Oils have been my medium of choice again this summer, with an emphasis on florals and animals. Mostly I find them a real struggle, though there is the occasional one that seems to “paint itself”. This painting of an orangutan, “Deep in Thought” was one of those struggles, more because of the drawing than the use of medium. Strangely the […]
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For the last few months I have continued working in oils, mostly working on florals. I am very happy with the bright colours I can achieve, though sometimes the paint brush seems to run away with me – unlike pastel sticks that I find much easier to control. This painting has an acrylic underpainting in very bright colours that […]
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For the last 3 months I have been working solely in oils. Will I return to pastels? Yes, certainly, for I love working in pastel, but I do find the fact that they have to be framed behind glass rather a nuisance. I am enjoying using a paint brush, though I find fine detail harder with the brush than with […]
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In my last blog I mentioned a portrait commission. It was an interesting one, and different from the norm, as I was asked to paint a back. It was a very beautiful back, belonging to a very beautiful young women. It was to be her birthday present from her new husband – so romantic! When he saw it completed, he was […]
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Back in May I was asked to display paintings in a gallery above a gelato house/restaurant in Monmouth named Green & Jenks: www.greenandjenks.com. (By the way, they make their own wonderful ice cream on site, and serve the most delicious food.) At the time they were promoting a floral theme to celebrate Chelsea Flower Show and asked me, in the first instance, […]
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It is a long time since I last blogged, but that doesn’t mean that I have stopped painting! I have been trying out some new techniques with oil painting that I am not yet ready to share. I did, however, paint these two farrier paintings, one in pastel and one in oil. I posted them on Facebook and asked […]
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