New paintings and regular art updates.
I’m trying to get this very complex painting finished for tomorrow. It’s going from OK to not sure. I don’t know if I like the brushstrokes. I’m trying another brush in a minute. I’m staying another hour or so. Will post more if it improves.
I’ve been doing some more work on this painting. I want to get it finished this week. It’s a painting of one of the poles of Jupiter. In the photo it has a bluish tinge but I’m trying to make it bluer as the exhibition title is “an Exhibition of Blue” on in Spode exhibition space at Acava Studios, Spode Site, Eleanor Street, Stoke, Stoke-on-Trent. From 2nd February 2019.
When we got married we stood on the steps of the local registry office and had a few group photos taken. I have the album somewhere (it was full of photos taken by friends as we didn’t have a photographer).
I decided to do a painting of the occasion. I used two photos, because faces and people were not posed I had to take figures off two photos to make a nice composition. (By the way my sister is that tall!)
I apologise for this photo, it’s not very good. I should really take better ones with lighting etc but I don’t have those resources.
I will say it was a good wedding. We only spent £300 and that was including our clothes, the food and our honeymoon!
How did we do it? Everyone bought food for a buffet at our house. We got a barrel of beer in. Friends made and iced the cake (shaped like a cat with a blue and pink cat on top). We held the reception at home. The honeymoon was two nights in a posh hotel, two in a bed and breakfast and the rest of the week in a caravan!
I thought I would post this progress picture even though I haven’t progressed that far since the last one. I do need to change some of the angles. I’m trying to give it a late afternoon glow to brighten the brickwork. I’m going to add some clouds to the sky to give it more depth.
The canvas is about 30 inches by 24 inches. I’m using acrylic again. I need to get some more blue and white for the sky.
Well that’s it for now. Christmas is coming and I’m getting busy, but I will try and post more over the next couple of weeks.
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I have just learnt of the sad loss of one of the nicest people I ever met.
Enos Lovatt was born in 1937 and died yesterday of pneumonia after being diagnosed with alzheimers disease a few years ago.
He was a contemporary of and studied painting in the same group as David Hockney.
I wish I knew more about him. He was a lovely person and I had the luck to have him as one of my tutors at the North Staffs polytechnic. I think he was on the interview panel that offered me a place on the Fine Art course there.
Enos was then living in Wolstanton and on one occasion I had the privilege of visiting his house with other students. The house was full of wonderful, colourful paintings. I remember some of them being stacked up the stairs.
I lost track of him after finishing college but he continued to paint and I went to see an exhibition of his painting a few years ago at Burslem School of Art. It was there that I heard he had been diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. I know he then moved away to be closer to his family.
I regret not talking to him more. He, like another of my tutors, Arthur Berry, was an inspiring teacher. I am sad to hear that he has passed away.
The painting in the photo is one of his still lives. I’m glad I have it as a memory of him.
Wip, work in progress. Someone has asked me for a painting of a green woman in green, brown and gold. I’m letting a little bit of red creep in. And turquoise too.
I want to model the shape to make it a bit more 3d so I will need to spend more time on it but it’s come on a lot considering I only started it today!
I actually went to the studio despite having a cold. Once I was in there I pout all the heating on. Snug in there but freezing in the corridors Plus I’m planning a painting of Jupiter. We’ll a tryptich actually. 3 long canvases.. Photos to follow.
I decided to paint a mermaid but didn’t want it to be Disneyish. So I’ve used a photo of a victorian painting to work from. Obviously that face was not blue and I have changed the image in other ways to make it more interesting. I don’t have much more to do to it but I have left it for the moment. I will probably finish it off in the next couple of days..
Some paintings I did are at my relatives house so I don’t see them very often. The painting I did of Jupiter is there. I do think it looks a bit “knitted”. I would love to do some paintings based on the latest images. I think that it would be very difficult to accurately copy the atmosphere of Jupiter. Saturn’s rings would be equally difficult to render.
The other paintings are: a picure of our garden before it got madly overgrown. Two paintings of Bovisand, out over Plymouth sound and looking inland at the geology of the rocks. My husband standing under an old arch on the isle of Portland. A watercolour of a place called Jennycliff, which is on the south east side of Plymouth.
And finally a snow scene that I painted in the 1980’s. It was meant to represent the steppes and has Russian style onion domes in the background. I’m not sure where I got my idea from. I was reading Frank Herberts “Dune” trilogy at the time and I had never seen an image of the steppes…. But to me that’s part of what being an artist is about, pictures in your mind that you are trying to represent.
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It’s that time of year when I have a small exhibition of work at Etruria. An area of Stoke on Trent in the Staffordshire. This year it came round fast. I didn’t really know it was going to happen till a couple of days ago. I think I was feeling a bit down and so I hadn’t organised things very well.
The building it is in is an old warehouse next to the Trent and Mersey, and Cauldon canals. It’s a very old building, with an old canoe up in the rafters, and half a model canal boat up high at one end I the room. It also has some of the largest long legged spiders I have ever seen….but thankfully once I had set up they went into hiding.
Anyway its happened, its up. I’m selling cards and necklaces as well as paintings. I am not really good at doing that. I can be polite, helpful, and enjoy explaining the work I have done, but I don’t like selling, putting a price on things.
I’ve spoken to a few artists recently and they feel the same way. They want to be creative, because they are creative, not because they want to run a business. …
Anyway I think people enjoyed what they saw at the exhibition, I had some good feedback.
What want to do now is start working on new art!
I’m trying to come up with a design for a poster. I may have an exhibition at the weekend and I needed to produce something I can put on social media. The only problem is I don’t know until Thursday night if I can use the room or not. I’m experimenting with ideas and I quite like the drawing I that I created for the background.
I have quite a few new pictures and I hope people will like them. I have to hang it myself, so it will be a bit difficult. It will beat the Warehouse at the Etruria Flint Mill in Stoke-on-Trent.
Im not sure if there will be more text on it. There will have to be more pictures. Anyway, more to follow I it happens !
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