Medium: Acrylic (Mostly Cryla) Paper: Acrylico Pittura Gold Pressed 400mg (185lbs) paper Size: 15.3/4″ × 13″ (40mm x 33mm) Duration: 6 hours over three sessions.
Original For Sale
This is a painting I worked on whilst teaching a student, during a one to one painting session on my current painting techniques using acrylic paints. Really enjoyed painting this beautiful horse as there was a variety of bright colours involved in it's creation. I also showed my student how I used a palette knife to give me textures on the waters edge. I also found that as the colours are so rich, they really help one another to stand out against each other in the bright sunshine. Might return to doing more of these beautiful animals. This handsome chap is called Picasso, suitably apt name I thought.
For the reference, I used a photo taken by the photographer John A. Wagner from Dinosaur, Colorado, who gave me his permission. Thanks John.
Just finished this double pencil sketch of Harry (a Scottie) and Poppy (a Shih Tzu), as payment for some building work a builder did for me. We both benefitted, me with the work done in my art studio and him with this sketch of his two dogs, which is a Christmas present for his good wife.
I decided at the outset to sketch each dog inside it's own oval background, wasn't really sure if it would look OK, but it seems to work. The builder absolutely loved it.
Here are some WIP steps before the finished pieces:
This is a commission, of a beautiful old Retriever called Murphy and the client specifically wanted Murphy (the name of the dog) standing full pose and on a black background. Here’s hoping the are happy with my attempt. I enjoyed this as it has been a while since I used a black background, that funnily enough was another Golden Retriever
This is a commission I've just completed in acrylics, using a decorators scraping palette knife, brushes and borrowed my daughters nail painting brushes (for those hard to get to whiskers LOL).
Really enjoyed this piece as I got to play with the background with a big fat palette knife to dab strong greened, limes blacks and white, trying to achieve a christmas holly feel (not sure it works, but like the texture I got). The reference was a compilation of a couple of photos the client gave me as sadly, Shorty is no longer with us (this is a Christmas present for the clients wife) I played around with the head of one photo and the front legs of another and stitched them together in photoshop then just started painting. With me, whenever I paint (or sketch for that matter) I try and begin with the eyes, capture those little beauties and your halfway there! Anywhoo, it is off to the framers on Monday, hopefully the client will like the finished result.
This is a fairly quick soft pastel sketch I drew in tribute to that great western artist Howard Terpning. I’ve always loved his portraits of life in the wild west and especially how he used the native peoples of North America as his subjects.
This is a practice charcoal I did in my art class I teach, for the reference I used an image I saw on Facebook awhile back, can't remember who posted it! Just loved the colour version in watercolour, and wanted to try it in charcoal. This is the result. Size A2 Duration 2 hours.
This is a work in progress of an oil painting I was inspired to paint after watching our wonderful Team GB in the London Olympics and would like to dedicate this piece to one very special olympian gold medalist, Jessica Ennis. Well done girl!
This painting has taken me two days so far and will eventually have a mainly black background with a few bits and bobs from the audience (flashes etc.)
Well I've finally finished this oil painting (after watching Murray thrash that lump of Swiss Cheese!) which I started painting yesterday. Is it only me, but it is getting really difficult to sketch or paint when the Olympics is on, isn't it?
I'm calling this piece "Waters Edge" and it is a memory of when I went walking with my daughter Jasmine (that's her in the water) earlier in the week. We went to a local beauty spot, down to the Gil, on the river Wansbeck just outside my local town of Morpeth in Northumberland.
This is a time lapse YouTube video I put together when I was sketching my niece Megan in charcoal, I put it together in iMovie on my iMac. I was really just practicing and getting to grips with some new willow charcoal sticks I bought. I forgot how beautiful it is as a medium, I was kind of put off as they always seemed to be really messy whenever I used them. It seems that having the paper nearly vertical helps to keep the artwork clean, well it did for me.
This whole sketch took me about 2-3 hours to complete and although a fairly nice image, I don't think I captured my niece as well as I wanted to. I ended up using only one stick of charcoal for the whole image, by the time I had finished, that stick had shrunk to the smallest stubble of charcoal you could just about hold!
Though I have really enjoyed this session in charcoals and I expect I'll be visiting my willow charcoal sticks again, soon.
