PALS - regular ‘Plein Air’ Painting Meet Ups in and around Leamington Spa.

I loved all the dynamic lines and interesting shapes in this composition of ‘The Glasshouse’. Such a great event hosted by @warwickshireopenstudios. Over 100 artists took part - such a lovely atmosphere in our local park.

Adding a different dimension by combining painting and sketching in one image. Hibiscus from my garden, bottle ‘acquired’ from a restaurant in Spain recently 🤫

I took the photo of this lily pond 4 years ago looking into a fish pool on holiday in Majorca - the kids were fascinated by it too and would spend hours squatting next to it catching tadpoles!

I’m really enjoying using these coarse, firm ‘Silver Briston’ brushes.  Its great when subject matter, knowledge & technique all start to come together and your vision for the painting and the reality become one.

I realised that all of my jug paintings have the handle on the rhs! ...as a right-handed person it looks kind of awkward and uninviting to see a jug with its handle on the left- So this painting is for all you ‘lefties’ out there!!

I was asked recently ‘why put the background in last- Well...the background is a second chance to form the shape only in the negative sense- so you get to reform your positive shapes by chopping into them and around them.

I was really tempted to use that bright, light green in the bottom middle as my background colour, but I restrained myself! I like it on the dark background- it’s quite sophisticated and allows the glass jug to glow!

I’m doing these little colour swatches to show students the number of mixes required for each element of the painting.
I like to premix my colours with a palette knife on a glass palette.

A miniature! The dogs head here is about the size of my finger tip in real life so quite fiddly to paint loosely! The paint swatches show all the premixed colours that went into painting the animal alone- just the 18!

Working ‘alla prima’ in oil paint. Focussing on leaving bits of the under-painting peeking through. Looing at ways of applying the paint in a dynamic and interesting way: focusing on colour, brushwork and composition.

Tricky not to get too involved in the detail on this one, again, i’m loving the shadows on the petals and those spirally tendrils. interesting background - makes it feel kinda breezy!

Anemones - Process shots

A teacher of mine used to say “How are you going to make that line interesting?” Funny how certain phrases stay with you!

Note the change of background as I changed my mind as to what to do with it! It’s important to remain fluid and let the painting inform what happens next.

I love the shadows of the stamen on the petals on this one. 

These ones look like I’ve just gone ‘Swish-swash-swoosh-done’ (that’s the painting equivalent of ‘bish-bash-bosh’!) but I assure you each mark was placed carefully and in a very deliberate way.

Japanese Anemones, process shots. I’m not feeling this painting for some reason.

Japanese Anemones, more freehand this time.

Sometimes in art you dance around an idea for a while then suddenly it becomes consolidated and you get quite excited by the possibilities...