Willow pattern painting

These are a couple of photos of when I painted a willow pattern plate painting. I did it because I had moved into my studio at spode and I had done a series of paintings of pottery.

I looked at various tiny images of the willow pattern pottery by various manufacturers and selected about 3 plates to do the design from. Sitting holding my phone in one hand with the canvas on a table easle is quite difficult, trying to look at photos about 2 inches Square. I made up the outer border mostly from my imagination.

 

Work in progress… Painting Jupiter is hard!

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.

Tiny paintings

I’m going to do some more tiny paintings soon, once I finally finish the painting of Jupiter that I’m doing for an Exhibition of Blue that is on at Spode artists studios exhibition space from 2nd February.

I like doing really small paintings, it’s a challenge to get enough details.

At the moment I’m having a few problems with WordPress. My fault. I tried to change something and I’ve ended up not being able to use the main pages but am trying to publish this locally…. I’ve even managed to add categories and tags…

We live and learn….

Wedding painting

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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!

Tig remembered

Tig was a handsome cat and very friendly. We loved him very dearly. I did this painting of him in about 2011. It’s just come up on my Facebook timeline.

We had Tig for a couple of years. He came and stole the other cat’s food and gradually moved in with us. The only thing he was scared of was The window cleaner, as soon as he heard him, he was out through the cat flap and away.

He was young and healthy and did mad things. I don’t have the pictures but I drew a series of cartoons of him on a website called Youdraw.com and called them the adventures of Tig.

One Wednesday he ran off as usual when the window cleaner arrived. But he did not come back that afternoon or night. I called and called but there was no sign of him. In the morning my partner went out looking for him while I got ready for work. He found Tigs body in the alleyway. We think he had drunk something, perhaps antifreeze that had poisoned him. There were garages nearby.

I couldn’t go to work that day. My grief was too much. I’m glad I painted him.

New Blue

 

I have finally got back in the studio and started a new painting. It’s called Jupiter in Blue and will be part of an exhibition at Spode called “an Exhibition of Blue” from 1st February 2019.

The painting will be for sale so if anyone is interested in it please drop me a line!

The price will be £300. Its 24×30 inches so its a decent size.

Better get on with it.

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1st layer done.

Portraits

Here are three portrait paintings I did a few years ago. They are all Acrylics on canvas.

I think I’m reasonably good at capturing a likeness, but there are other things like the proportions of a figure to get right. I painted my mother and sister in one painting. My sister was taller than my mum but their heads are level in the painting I did. That’s because my mom was standing on a step so their heads were at the same level. To be honest it looks odd, not because it’s wrong but because you don’t expect one set of legs to be so much longer!

When I was learning to draw and paint figures I would often draw the heads bigger and the legs shorter. That’s because I was not looking properly and not taking account of foreshortening, especially when the model was sitting on the ground.

I enjoy painting people but not many ask for portraits these days. I am also good at painting pets, and  I don’t need photoshop to put two figures together from two separate photos.

Anyway feel free to contact me if you ever want a portrait or a painting of an ancestor for instance

Cat portraits

Painting cats.
I like painting cats from photographs but sometimes they don’t stay still. These are paintings of Casey and Lucy. Both were painted before I got a digital camera and although they were painted from life the cats didn’t stick around to pose!
Casey could get tangled up in anything, he climbed up shelves and sat in the middle of the road waiting for me. I had been given this kite as a Christmas present and he was determined to play with it!

Lucy on the other hand was an old lady of 21 when I painted her. She didn’t do much as she got older but she loved a fuss.

I added the patterns for both of them to make them more interesting. I’m pleased to take commissions for pet portraits if you are interested.

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