“Life’s a bitch.” Acrylic on paper.
The second in the “dog walker” series.Not sure why I chose to do this one in acrylic rather than watercolour, but it’s done now so it doesn’t matter, does it? The colours aren’t so bright as this, I’m just a crap photographer.
Once again the Ballycotton 10mile road race has come and gone, it was on yesterday and it reminded me that I had not embarrassed my son by posting the painting of him that I did when he ran the race for the first time. It was on his list of things to do before he reached 40, and he achieved both last year. So there you are , I have suitably shamed him and probably ruined any chance I had of becoming a portrait painter.
Acrylic on paper.
This is Missy, my friend the Bulldog puppy. She belongs to Orla, a brilliant potter who has a studio next to mine. After a shaky start, Missy and I have become great friends , as you can see, she allowd me to paint her portrait, without a hint of embarassment. Maybe I have found another string to my bow….Pet Portraits.
Not positive that I haven’t posted this before, forgive me if I have, but my memory(and record keeping) are getting progressively worse.
This is from a series of paintings, well 4 , that I did of runners after last years Ballycotton 10 mile road race, where does the time go, its on again in two weeks! I tried to give the impression of movement in this one and I think it worked up to a point.
The weather over here is amazing for the time of year, 13c today, I hope it stays like that as I am going to Limerick on Sunday to embarrass myself ,painting En plein air with a group of fellow artists.
I posted a pencil sketch of this in February and I have finally managed to finish painting it. The incentive was that somebody bought it before it was finished so the pressure was on. Its a small oil on canvas, 11”x8”, it took a while to finish, the weather has been so damp the paint would not dry, so I couldn’t get the detail in.
It’s cold, very cold, I hate the cold, my studio is cold. Did I say I hate the cold.
Compared to this time last year it is almost humid at 1C but I just cannot get warm, old age creeping up?
It’s very hard to paint when your feet are cold and my studio is very hard to heat. Have I moaned enough…ok.
Thought this might bring a smile to your faces. I have been working on this for a while, acrylic on paper, my grandson about 6 months ago. I thought it was finished until I just put up the picture and I realised I haven’t painted in the zip on the right hand side , so I will call it a work in progress, especially as I now see several things that can be improved.
This is my sketch from the second sketching session my group had. It was up to me to pick the subject, hence the not very imaginative still life. Anyway everyone seemed to enjoy it and it kept us from the wine for nearly an hour, so thats good, ….isn’t it?
My art group meets every Thursday night, in each others houses, as we seemed to be descending into a drinking group, we decided that each week the host would put together a still life that we would sketch.
This turned out to be a brilliant idea as we all made an effort, This is my idea of the first still life, I used a black pen to sketch with and put in the colours later, from memory.
I keep fiddling with this, so it must be finished, I would be interested to hear opinions. I was tempted to put a couple of people in the right foreground but thought it might close down the view a bit.
Have been busy of late putting together an order of prints for the Kilkenny Group of shops, its the first order from them so hopefully they will sell well and result in more orders. Needless to say my large format printer decided to pack up at this time and I had to get them printed elsewhere.
Have to say I was not impressed by the Canon company, although its one of their printers, an iPF5000, they have no clue who fixes them in Ireland, so if anyone has had similar problems you might let me know.
The painting is progressing as you can see, I have most of the shapes blocked in and now its time to start refining and defining the values and to start putting in some of the details…this is where it could all go sadly wrong.
I took some pics in Cork city at the beginning of the year and have done nothing with them since. After playing around with the crop tool, came up with this, and finally started painting it on Sunday. The following are a few WIP shots, I will try to remember to keep doing it so I can show the progress.
As you can see I sketched the image in with a brush and have just started blocking in the main forms. I want to keep it quite loose without to much definition but plenty of light , we will see what happens.
The weather has been so miserable that all you can do is paint. We were promised an Indian summer but the weather totally bi-passed my part of Ireland, Dublin had 25C we had 15C. Never mind at least I did some work
Still on the birds but this time a farmyard cockerel, on of my friends keeps 40 or so hens and 2 cockerels along with assorted dogs and cats and ducks.
I decided to put a few distant birds in this one, I don’t think it makes a huge difference but adds a bit of life to the background.
