Barbed Wire, finished.

Worked all day on this and I think it's done...can't think of anything else to do to it anyway so that's time to stop. It's pretty much done what I wanted it to, from a distance it looks like a study of the long grass, close to all the barbs appear. From a distance it's conventional, close to it's abstract.

I'm quite pleased with it.

More barbs

Looking at what I've done so far on my Barbed wire painting with fresh eyes this morning I saw that the original idea was lost, this was becoming a simple one dimensional painting of some grass and wire, not what I'd intended at all.

So I've thrown in more barbed wire, not as a literal dipiction but using a trick I've messed around with in the past. A relatively simple shape like the twists of barbed wire can be indicated as an extra layer in the painting by using the direction of pastel strokes rather than colour and shade, the underlying colour is still of the background scene but with the extra element indicated by the texture of the painting. I've not really got this to work before. I'm determined that I will this time though, the effect is still quite subtle, not yet sure how far I'll push it.

Progress:

Walk on the wierd side.

Every now an then I have a go at painting or drawing something wierd, a nut doctor would probably love these...

Charcoal on A4 cartridge paper:

Pastels on brown card, 35 X 50 cm.

Johnnyrook

Also did this quick study of a johnnyrook (striated caracara) last night, he's a rare, very inquisitive raptor that is actually quite common here in the Falklands. They are pretty mad, jittery creatures so I wanted lots of movement to be apparent, didn't quite work as I wanted so may have another go at this idea. Pastels on 24X30 yellow pastelmat.

Unison

Well...after being treated to a set of Daler-Rowney pastels by my wife last week....look what arrived in the post today,  

a rather nice set of Unison pastels. I was warned about these and the warnings were justified, they are soft, they are intense, once tried nothing else will do....all true, these are stonking pastels.

Knocked out a couple of quick hand sketches with them (that's sketches of hands by the way).

Hands: charcoal and pastels on white Ingres paper.

...and this one, Pastels on white Ingres (nice pastels Unison)

Oil pastel doodle

Well, had a visit from my ma Griz yesterday and she presented me with a selection of oil pastels (I'd mentioned I wanted to try them), got doodling with them an ended up with this:





























Pretty mad eh?, Griz by the way is a skillful artist who also lives on West Falkland just up the road at Chartres, here is some of her recent work that she recently posted on Artforum.co.uk, location is Surf Bay near Stanley on East Falkland:
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