Canvases

Trying to do my final large canvas in pastel, charcoal and ink. Hope the result is good. I think it will do. The problem is with pastel on canvas is that it is hard to avoid the lines of the stretcher behind. Otherwise pastel is nice on the texture of primed material.

Open Exhibition Invite - People and Portraiture

Painting the frame

Matt's bodged together a frame for tomorrow and we're painting it in Laura Ashley pale duck egg blue which was used on some of the walls in the house by the previous owners.

Forthcoming Exhibition

Matt and I have been invited to do an exhibition in August - which is a surprise. So I'll be inviting everyone to that shortly. After we've cracked on with some serious work I guess. First I must prepare the frame for tomorrow's hanging at Oxford House in the Open Exhibition.

Illustrations with slippery meaning

Getting really into illustration / painting with slippery meaning. You draw roughly. What you draw looks like something else. You change it to emphasise the thing you didn't intend. You continue that process ... you decide when it's done.

Imaginary bible scene

Spacebird

News! Painting News! Ta - rah!

First oil painting what I ever have done, Mr Placard Man, has been accepted for the Open Exhibition at Oxford House. I have to hang him on 1st July at 4.30pm. Sorry for inconsequential detail. I am, rather delighted.

Imaginary estuary

Thoughts of train over bridge

Sunset river scene ... in alternate universe

Mythological tree

Latex stop out and watercolour. I haven't bothered peeling the latex off this one as the way the watercolour has stayed on it makes an intriguing eye - now I think this tree must be a person tree of some type.

Playground on the edge of another world

Estate, latex stopout and watercolour

Autobiographical painting - Broxbourne

Oil painting - pool

Not quite sure what I'm going to do with this beginnings of a classic pool folk-art painting. There's an owl snake in the tree ... it just looks like an owl with red eyes at the moment but it's going to become an owl-snake shortly. There's a burning bush under the tree. I quite like oils now I'm getting used to them. I did an oil Reuters this morning for the first time - will post later ... about a dying plane.

Animals at night

I can see a UFO in this painting too. I think this is an animal village where animals live in the houses. It's somewhere in Africa. I think that's the brown and black colours with the white dots making me think that.

Imaginary characters in landscapes

I've been working on some textured colourful backgrounds in watercolour, latex stop out and oil pastel - I'm just starting to put characters in. Going to work on surreal beasts, mixtures of creatures and situations ... trying to feel it all intuitively rather than coming at it with an initial idea. I work better that way and I think a lot of people do. Practising my imagination.

Polar bear sunset

Slug and Tornado