Snow again

Had a fall of snow last night which made the roads lethal and had to cancel my art class this morning because many of the class were snowed in. We just cannot handle snow in Ireland, mainly because we don’t get very much, especially in the south, but I suspect we are going to have to get used to it as this is the second year in a row. I’m sure this sounds strange to those of you who get snow every year, but if you consider that I have lived in Ireland for over 30 years and I think this is only the 4th or 5th time I have seen snow.

With the hard weather it is more important to keep feeding the birds, and it gives me more opportunities to sketch the likes of this stunning Goldfinch

 

Winter Visitor

Sitting at my computer yesterday , trying to do some work, between watching the comings and goings at my bird feeders, when this fellow caught my eye. It’s a male Brambling , a member of the Finch family and a fairly uncommon , though annual, winter visitor to Ireland. I was glad to see that he is still around this morning and holding his own with the aggressive Greenfinches and Chaffinches.

 

I seem to have gone back to my first love, painting birds, something I decided long ago to give up because there are so many truly brilliant wildlife artists out there, and I’m not one of them. But in the end I think you have to do what you want to do regardless of how good or bad the results are.

This is a small painting of a young male Blackbird, coming constantly to the apples I put out, during the recent cold spell we had I sometimes had to replenish the stocks three times a day, so voracious were the birds.

Buenos Aries

 

Another quick rooftop sketch just to keep the ball rolling, considering how irreligious I am (is that a word?) strange that churches keep appearing

 

The entrance to La Bocca

Buenos Aries

Been in the doldrums for a long while, finding it hard to paint and even harder to keep up the blog. Just back from a 10 day trip to Buenos Aries, a long long trip, but it has given me time to think about what I want to do and how I want to do it, and I realise once again that all I want to do is paint

This is a quick sketch I did from the balcony of my apartment, using ink and marker pens, the city is amazingly green and low rise , if that is the right way to describe it. There are very few tall buildings ,most are two story and every street is lined with trees, especially orange trees.

 

A couple dancing the Tango in the street in the Bocas region of the city, a great subject for some paintings. 

Exhibition

 

“Bacon’s Studio” Oil on canvas.

Tonight sees the opening of “The Old Road Painters” annual exhibition at the Shanagarry Design Centre, Shanagarry , Co Cork. If you are in the area during the next month it is well worth a look. The group, 8 strong , with a diversity of styles, has been in existence over 20 years and has exhibited every year since inception.

Finishing up

This doesn’t apply to the blog but the many paintings I have unfinished in the studio. 

I started this painting in June of 2009, just after returning from a trip to Poland. The inspiration was a boggy area, viewed from a small bridge , which I spent hours looking at in the hope of seeing a pair of Black Woodpeckers that were nesting in a tree way at the back.

The background to the painting happened fast enough but then the inspiration ground to a halt and it has taken several reworkings and many changes to reach this stage, even then I am not sure it’s finished but after protestations from several of my students to “practice what I preach”, I have decided to leave it alone…….for now.

If anyone is in the Shanagarry , Co Cork area during the month of July, myself and a group of artists that make up The Old Road Painters , have an exhibition in the Kilkenny design centre opening on the evening of Friday the 9th and running for the month, all welcome.

I’m Back(I think!)

Can’t believe I haven’t posted anything to my blog since February, where has the time gone? Have been busy though, teaching and painting, (trying to paint), going through one of those periods where nothing seems to turn out how you want it to.

This is a little sketch I did with pastels, which amazingly sold while still taped to a board. Maybe there is a lesson here….forget the  big planned works and just sketch!

 

This is a small acrylic I did of Cobh (Queenstown as it was called in the days of British colonialism), this was the last stop the Titanic made .

The Fastnet Rock, again  small acrylics,…I think small is good at the moment because at least I am finishing them.

"Autumn Leaves" Coloured pencil on black paper.


Having got diverted from the work in progress I have been showing on the blog, I have struggled to find something to post. I restarted my art classes in the last couple of weeks and found I needed to have a real tidy up in the studio as it was getting impossible to move. It's amazing what you find! This is a small work I did with coloured pencils some time in the last two years, which disappeared in the morass of unfinished work. I also found several other pieces, mostly unfinished which I must make a real effort to finish.
Are other artists like this or are they all disciplined and finish what they start before moving on to something else? I seem to be constantly moving from one work to another, finishing some , while losing others until sometimes months later they turn up.

Work in progress(cont)

Finally got down to doing some more work in the studio, now that the ice and snow has gone , for good I hope,I am able to heat the studio enough to work.

Basically I am still only blocking in colour, but gradually I am painting in more detail and some of the dark shadows. I am using a fairly limited palette of:

Prussian Blue, Cadmium Red,Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White.

As the painting progresses I am thinking more and more that I will leave it as an Autumn scene, rather than Jack Frost, but who knows?

Feeding the birds

 

With the very cold spell we are going through ,it’s been ever more important to keep the feeders topped up for the local bird population.

 

                    House Sparrow. Pastel pencil on brown paper.            

Not only does this give the birds a better chance of survival, it also gives me endless hours of enjoyment watching them, and trying to sketch them. There seems to be a hierarchy amongst the House Sparrows as they queue up on a twig overlooking one of the feeders.

Jack Frost

It’s been so cold here in the last couple of weeks that I have found it almost impossible to heat the studio enough to be able to paint, hence I have not worked on my “Jack Frost” painting so have no “work in progress” to show.Finally a thaw seems to be setting in , today we are back to normal with lashing rain and high winds.

While not painting I have spent a lot of time working on my website and gazing out of the window watching the birds on my feeders.With the cold spell all over Northern Europe , here in Ireland we have had a huge influx of northern thrushes, Fieldfare and Redwing and they have appeared in numbers in gardens and on feeders, many of them half starved after their long flight.   

                       Fieldfare

I’ve been going through some of the piles of unfinished work I seem to have lying around, especially watercolours, and every now and then I come across one that appears finished but has been left for some reason.

This is one that I unearthed, its not a particularly good photo of it but hopefully you can get the idea. Its a place a few miles from me called “Roches Point”, which is at the mouth of  Cork harbour, hence the lighthouse.

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Work in progress (cont)

At the moment all I am doing is filling in the leaf shapes without putting in any real detail. I am using a limited pallet so that I hope the painting will gel together.

 

At this stage I have begun to introduce  detail into some of the leaves and I am already wondering whether I will make this a painting in the “Jack Frost” series or will I leave it in the autumn colours. it remains to be seen.

 

Bad News & Good News

With the recession biting deeply, it wasn’t much of a surprise albeit disappointing to hear just before Christmas that a new gallery , that I had some work in, was closing down after only 6 months. They stayed open up to New Year in the hope that people would buy prints etc as last minute presents, so I was delighted to hear today that they had sold an original of mine (shown below)

I think I will have several glasses of red wine tonight to celebrate.

Work in progress

It seems like forever since I posted anything to my blog, so I thought I would start the New Year with something different for me and post a work in progress.

 

 

Just before Christmas I was shown  a series of photos, taken by an artist friend , which he called “Jack Frost” for obvious reasons. I normally work only from my own reference but was so taken by some of the photos I asked could I use some, to which he agreed.

After playing around with the crop tool for a while I ended up with several photos I am going to use to try and create a series of paintings and this is the first attempt. I am using a fairly large canvas, 102x67cm and painting with oils

 

I don’t want to copy the picture but I do want to use the orange brown leaf as a focal point. I lightly sketched some leaf shapes in, just to have some reference, but I find as I paint that these shapes are being changed over and over again

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Art Cards

 

          I have long been fascinated by the idea of  ACEO’s  and have intended for just as  long a time to try them out. This last week-end having spent entirely in the studio, the first  time for a long time,  I actually produced a couple, between work on a larger canvas.

I really enjoyed doing them and have every intention of painting more. On a purely commercial basis,in these days of recession, I suppose it makes sense to produce small paintings that are affordable to all. I think I will produce some limited edition prints from them and put them on my Etsy shop.  

In the last few weeks my art classes have restarted after the summer break. I am constantly amazed at the amount of interest there is in learning to paint and once again my classes are full, long may it last.                      

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"Along the rocks"

The weather in Ireland is atrocious at the moment, so I thought I would show a picture that I painted a few years ago on one of the few days that we had sunshine. We have had so much rain this summer , I'm surprised we haven't all got webbed feet.
Went to the studio yesterday with great intentions, but like all good intentions, they fell by the wayside and I ended up flitting from one unfinished painting to another and achieving nothing.Does this happen to anyone else?

From my office window.

Pages from my sketchbook: From my office window.



Not only do I seem to be blocked as far as my painting is concerned I also seem to have problems with my blogging. The sketch above was done from my office window, there is a small stand of trees where I have bird feeders, some mornings the light through the trees is amazing, but trying to capture it is another matter.
I am going to spend the whole of this week-end in my studio in the hope that I might finish one or two of the many paintings that I have started over the last couple of months. It would be great satisfaction to just finish one, hopefully I will post the result on Monday. I really envy those artists involved with daily painting blogs, where do they get the inspiration from all the time and the discipline to keep doing it?

I don't believe a month has gone by

I can't believe it's over a month since I posted anything to my blog.For some reason, I have felt totally blocked as far as painting is concerned and this seems to have followed through to my blogging. hopefully this will be the start of a new lease of life.
My art group had a mini exhibition in a local hotel, while it wasn't the best venue ever, we sold a few paintings, which we didn't expect, and the hotel asked us to provide some paintings to display around the hotel as well, so its a good advert if nothing else.
Since the last time I posted I have been approached by two other galleries to show my work, so things seem to be looking up all of a sudden, all I need now is the inspiration to paint!

Back home

While I have been home from Poland for more than a week, I have'nt yet knuckled down to painting, although I have been running my classes, so I will have to be satisfied with a photo taken in Poland of White Storks nesting . It was a joy to see the tolerance with which these birds are treated, even to the extent of nesting poles being erected for them where there were no suitable chimneys; I doubt that they would be given the same consideration in Ireland.
What a beautiful country Poland is, it reminded me of my childhood in England when the farming methods still allowed wild flowers to proliferate in the meadows and there were butterflies and grasshoppers everywhere. presumably being a member of the EU will soon change this, and intensive farming methods will take over as they did here, with the resultant weed killers and insecticides being used liberally, to the detriment of the flora and fauna and ultimately to the detriment of our own species.
On the art scene , I have been approached by another gallery to exhibit my work, so on the marketing side, things are looking up, although on the actual sales side the recession seems to really be biting, it is even affecting the sales of prints. I suppose this is no wonder, people really seem to be worried about spending on non necessities . there have been recessions before and we got through them and I am sure this one will be no different, but I think it is important for people to try and remain positive, difficult as this can be.

Holiday

I'm not the most prolific of bloggers but I will be even less prolific for 10 days from the 19th of May. I am heading for Poland on a birding holiday, with 3 friends. Poland has been on my list of countries to visit for along time and I hope to find lots of inspiration for paintings.

"Hot Stuff" Watercolour on Arches paper.

Another of my watercolour attempts that I refound recently and decided to finish. Don't think it came out too bad, but have to admit, I will never be a master at watercolour.

The weather is being it's normal depressing self, every time we get a hint of sunshine the wind whips up and the rain falls, but I suppose we will never die of thirst. Even more depressing than the weather are the constant reports of doom and gloom from our politicians, news media, and just about everyone you talk too, you would think we had never seen a recession before....life goes on.

On a much happier note...I sold a painting yesterday, another of my abstracts "Spring Garden" so I am delighted and have huge incentive to paint more abstracts.