Painting these lilies every day from life - lets see what happens!

These lilies are still in bud so i’m hoping to paint them every day as they emerge. This one was all about the negative spaces and strange shadows!

12” x 12” oil on board

12” x 12” oil on board

12” x 12” oil on board

Turns out I had the same taste in flowers 15 years ago! This one took some concentration…I actually had a sore left eye from squinting for 4 hours by the end of it!

I can’t keep calling these ‘flowers in a vase’- so i’ve decided to name them after something that happened to me that day!

Sometimes when you know an animal is pale coloured it can be very hard to convince yourself that the shadow colours are correct.  I am aiming to get my brushstrokes down ’right first time’ with no re-working.

Wiry haired dogs are definitely the hardest to paint, you’ve got to kind of drag one colour through another on the palette so that you get that ‘flecking’ in the brushwork of two or more colours.

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.