Stormy sky & sand dunes.

The North Arm of Fox Bay, Mt Sulivan in the background, this is a photo that I've been meaning to use as a painting reference for ages. Finally got round to it, soft pastels on 14" by 19" grey pastelmat, took two half days to paint and sold it the day after it was finished.

Reference.

Day 1, roughed in.

 Day 2, finished.

Internet presence

Been working on this a bit recently. I've been blogging for over a year now and had got to grips with my Blogger account and using google reader to keep track of blogs I am following, I do have a website which is still a work in progress so I'm not yet publicising it.

I can't even remember how I came across it now but I stumbled on this site: Lori McNee, fine art & tips, which has some excellent articles about using social networking to raise ones profile and increase traffic to your site. After reading through the advice on there I created my own artists facebook page and twitter account with links back to my blog. I then used RSS Graffiti to feed my blog posts to my Facebook page and twitterfeed to feed content from the FB page to Twitter.



Having done all this it did leave me wondering for a moment if I actually needed a website at all. The blog is a core element of my web presence, my development as an artist, achievements, thoughts are all recorded here in far more detail and in a more comprehensive layout than the website will be able to achieve. The Facebook page has up to date galleries of my art, my contact information is there on all three elements, blog, FB & Twitter....so what's the website actually going to do?....

After pondering it for a while I did realise that it still had a place in the scheme of things. This is the only place I can present a comprehensive, detailed gallery, the FB albums are OK but limited in what they can do in the way of searching and presenting information. There is also the credability of a stand alone website, It's strange to think of something as recent and hi tech as the internet as having respected, bricks & mortar type of entities but that's what websites really are, the fashionable and highly flexible areas of social networking are great but not everyone is comfortable with them, the website is a solid base for all these more intangible, changable applications.


Mind you my website isn't in the equation yet and still my internet presence seems to be doing OK...interesting.

Progress on the double portrait

Tonights progress, more colour built up. I attempted to push these a little warmer but no good, I think these just are going to be cool toned paintings. It still surprises me how little control one has over the look of a painting once you're a into it. One of these days I'm goinf to do a completely crazy painting with no respect for colour tone at all, just using value and nothing else...could be fun.

Double portrait

It's my birthday, today I can do whatever I want....within reason. So bearing that in mind I've made a start on a pair of portraits of my niece. These are based on two photographs taken on the same day, same lighting but showing two different moods. I'm actually painting these at the same time, each time I pick up a new stick of colour I use it on one, then the other before I use another colour. Interesting experiment so far. Both are on 35 X 40 cm grey pastelmat.


Reference photos:

Charcoal undersketch:

  





















Filling colour with soft pastels:

So far so good.

Big project

Took the first step today on what could turn out to be an impossible project. I'm attempting to turn out a series of paintings based on nothing but my memories (as a seven year old) of the Falklands War in 1982. My parents, elder brother and I were incarcerated in our house in Fox Bay East during the conflict. The settlement was garrisoned by Argentine troops and my memories of the time are of the impact of their presence and the air attacks by the British.

There were events during that time that I still recall as snapshots but filtered through the understanding and perspective of a seven year old (and the passing of 29 years as well of course). The first stage of this process has been to try to describe all of these images that remain to me, so I've jotted them down and drawn thumbnail sketches of how I recall them.

I've no idea if I'm going to be able to get anything to come out of this idea, still, should be interesting. On a lighter note here's a graphite drawing of a rather cute rough collie, This is the first time since I've started drawing again that I've used graphite for a finished drawing. I'm reasonably pleased but golly graphite is a slow, restrictive medium compared to charcoal.

Hawk & Rockhopper paintings

Just browsing through our local paper and saw one of my paintings looking back at me from an advertisment:

My Young hawk and Rockhopper paintings are up for sale in Studio 52, fingers crossed!

Facebook Page

 I've always shared my paintings on my facebook profile and have had great feedback so thought I'd take the next step and publish my own facebook page, seems to me like a lot of people prefer to use FB for following such things rather than wrestling with stuff like google reader and such so I stuck a 'like; gadget on the bottom of my blog for those that prefer that option. There's a gallery of my paintings on there and an RSS feed from posts on here.

Now I just need to get my website finished....busy busy.

Shearing

This is a subject I've been meaning to have a go at for a while...not to have a go at shearing myself I hasten to add but to paint the subject of shearing. During the last Sports Week I took the opportunity to take a load of pictures of the shearing competition to give me suitable references.

Eventually I would like to do a series of these but so far I've completed just one.

Reference:

Finished painting:

I'm pretty chuffed that on the day after finishing this painting I had an offer for it...result!. Whilst on the subject of selling I've also put my two bird close-ups up for sale in a shop/gallery in Stanley, here they are in Studio 52. Hope they sell.