Trying for economy of brush strokes here...it looks simple but for some reason it’s not!

Creating good light and shade is essential for a still life set up.

The great thing about these little flower paintings is that you can create a new set up each day by rotating the vase / changing the background colour / changing the vase - so many possibilities!

I was brave today- I picked some stems to paint from the garden and painted them from life without any drawing first which was quite liberating actually!

Looking great in its new frame :)

The orange bits - top right were not in my original plan, and neither were the shadow shapes on the brickwork, that just happened at the end of the painting as a bit of an experiment really! 

The painting above is from a small section of the garden, roughly in the middle of the panoramic. I like how the 4 quarters of the painting are very different to each other and I’m happy with the colour scheme.

I make a special pilgrimage to this house in a village nearby most years to see these amazing hollyhocks that grow in the garden and along the front wall.

This is called a ‘tray-frame’. Basically the painting is mounted on brackets just below the surface of the frame with a small ‘shadow gap’ left around the edge of the painting. Here I am posing with my muse who looks very proud of himself indeed!

My submission for ‘sky arts portrait artist of the week’.  This week’s sitter was the Journalist & BBC presenter ‘Clive Myrie’. Over 1700 people painted him on Sunday morning via a live stream on ‘Sky arts’.

Lula,  I tried to work loosely here, finding the colours in her black fur. Such a lovely reference photo with the bluebells to her left and having her looking off into the distance. She looks gentle and wise.

The client wanted it to be BIG- twice as big as anything I have ever done before! Not only that, the ‘dog’ part of it that I am comfortable painting covers about 5% of the surface area and is largely in shadow! And sunsets? Well previously I’d done 2! 

This one was a bit tricky with such dramatic lighting and a rear end to invent given that Faydo’s partner in ‘crime and wall antics’ was exiting stage left, as the photo was taken.

Painting as a ‘wildcard’ at Winston Churchill’s family home ‘Chartwell House’ in Kent....The show has just aired on the Sky Arts’ which is now free for all to view on Freeview channel 11 (season 6 episode 4).

For anyone considering having a painting done of a black animal- this is a great example of how to photograph them…with the light shining to one side of their face/body. A lovely composition too i thought.

With this one I felt that I had to establish the light and shade early on- I needed to make this painting soft yet intense - to make you think - ‘I wonder what she’s looking at?’

It was Ralphs lucky day when he got rescued from the dogs home aged 12. I noticed there was lots of clover in the grass in the foreground so I’ve included just one in the painting, with 4 leaves - can you spot it??

I calculated recently that in 11 months I have painted 59 animal portraits and 7 human ones!

Isn’t this little lady just as cute as a button! I was really excited to paint the lemon yellow door of the ‘Citroen 2cv’ as well - that chrome wing mirror makes it for me!

I’m loving Pepper’s pose here- it’s like a doggy-style ‘Saturday Night Fever’!