Before and After

Sadly, before Christmas, Lucy, one of the two family cats (sister to Minnie) passed away after struggling gallantly with heart disease for several months. She has been sorely missed as she was part of the family for over 16 years and a constant joy to be around. I always looked forward to seeing her when returning home and she always made me laugh and smile. She had one of the most gentle, sweet, playful and loving characters I've ever seen in an animal.

As a tribute, of sorts, I have revisited an earlier painting of Lucy I'd previously 'finished', with the intention of completing it properly in her memory.

This link shows the original blog post I made a few years ago concerning the initial painting. Below is a side by side comparison of the two cat portraits.

Spot the difference! Which one do you prefer?

The medium is acrylic paint on canvas textured board. The painting has been framed and given as a gift to my parents who have it hanging in their dining room.

Slow Work Days

We all have them from time to time. Slow work days that is. And towards the end of my employment in my last job I had many of them. There simply wasn't enough work coming in to keep everyone busy, even after the company tried to run on a skeleton staff. So before the day of redundancy came, I spent my notice period occupying myself by carrying out what seemed like futile and menial tasks for the company's owners and secretly doodling in my sketch pad.

The latter part was great. I felt like I was finally getting paid to do something I enjoyed. It would have been even better if I wasn't doing it alone in a dark, windowless room measuring no more than 2 or 3 meters in either direction. (For some reason, the powers that be decided that seeing as we were to be made redundant, they might as well make the last few weeks of our employment there as unbearable as possible; separating everybody up, restricting our internet access and being thoroughly unpleasant at any given opportunity. I think they were hoping we'd walk and so save having to pay us...) But still, you can't have everything.

Below are a few of the sketches I did during that period, as well as some Whale-phant/Ele-Whale* doodles and a dinosaur flying a kite.

*a character I'm working on. More to come in future updates. Maybe.

The cat is my pet, Minnie, who I've sketched and painted before, viewable in earlier posts in this blog. The man is my Grandad. The horses were in anticipation of a painting I might attempt at some point. All were done very quickly (by my standards) with no real dedication to extreme accuracy, rather to being speedy.

SNOW!

Oh my God! SNOW!!! Quick, panic buy! Bread, copious amounts of bread, buy it. And milk. More milk than is humanly possible to drink before it goes off. Petrol! Mustn't forget the petrol, to fuel the car to carry out the bread and milk salvage. Snow chains too... Should definitely get some of those this year. I heard it's going to be 10 cm deep. 10 cm! Ten centimeters! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!

Oh, wait... it's melting already.

I love snow. Call me childish, but I always get excited at the prospect of snow each winter time. Especially when it coincides with Christmas like it did last year (here in Britain). It almost makes the season bearable. I just love the look of it. Even the most aesthetically miserable places are cheered up by its glistening white icey coating.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the snow is going to be making a prolonged visit this year, which is why I'm glad I ventured out in it earlier with my camera. The sun was hidden behind clouds all day, so sadly there were no nice shadows or reflections to be taken in. Instead I messed around with long exposures and small apertures. As long and small as my camera will allow anyway, which isn't all that long or small as it happens. The ND filter however  helped to extend both as much as was possible in the available light.

As in my last post, the images were taken at Hay Wood, near Baddesley Clinton.

It's a Dog's Life

As promised in my last update, here is a photo of the last painting I completed, a commission no less, of Ella. A dog. (Just in case you were wondering which particular animal it was.)

The person who commissioned the painting (as a birthday gift) and the recipient were both delighted with the final product. -Always a relief. They said I'd captured her spirit and essence and said how closely it resembled her.

I was fairly sure I'd captured her look accurately enough, but if anyone should know, it's going to be the dog's owners, so having that confirmed was great.

What's the time Mr. Wolf?

I took the opportunity this week to re-work the wolf painting that I originally posted a good many months ago. I was not happy with it at the time or afterwards as I felt it could do with some more detail and better colour balancing.

I'm reasonably happy with it now. The edges look more like how I wanted them to the first time round, with more definition against the background. I also took some time to improve the eyes, as they looked a little bit too intense before, like the wolf was tripping rather heavily or something. Now he just looks mildly drunk.

Something Something Tiger

Another painting, another deliberation over the title.

The tiger was done in record time, compared to the other paintings, which I'm quite happy about. I intend to keep on lessening the time it takes whilst maintaining the same or higher quality in future output.

The tiger, gorilla and wolf are now framed and ready for exhibiting at the Reading Rooms in Berkswell over this coming weekend (Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st July), so it will be interesting to see what happens...

Mother and Child!

'Mother and Child'. Or something. I really struggle to come up with good titles for finished paintings. I seem to want to just say what the painting is of, like 'Lion'. 'Tiger'. 'Wolf'. 'Paint on canvas, applied by a brush over a number of hours, whilst listening to the inane babble of ITV's Loose Women'.

I really tried with this painting, but all I could come up with (before Mother and Child, which is pretty rubbish really) was 'The Universal'. Which is incredibly pretentious. Ha. Oh well, something to work at...

The painting itself, I'm quite happy with. Again, I feel like I could have done more, as usual, but it was becoming a case of ever diminishing returns the more I worked on it. I'm still learning what works and what doesn't. I still haven't mastered what brush to use and when, instead sticking to the same one or two brushes, which probably aren't always best suited.

Ideally I'd like a really, really fine and stiff brush to get the really fine details on, but I can't seem to find any for sale.

Officially a Professional?

Great news, I've sold my first painting. In fact it actually sold a few months ago. I'm now working on another. Stay tuned.

It's flattering to know that people are prepared to part with their hard-earned in order to have something I've created. It also provides a nice confidence boost and incentive to keep doing more. Hopefully, quicker, better and more often.