'Wolf Head'

Well, almost into the new year, hope everyone had a lovely Christmas!

I try and take photographs of my paintings during progression to post on my site and also to use as a visual aid to show to my students. I thought I would post one of the oil paintings I completed for my exhibition to show the stages involved, actually it was the very last one I finished for the exhibition pretty much a week before setting up!

The first stage is just a simple pencil freehand sketch onto gessoed panel before I then add a thin layer of lean oil paint as a ground and take out any areas I want to leave light. I then start to lay down layers of translucent washes in picture 3 making sure I keep the paint lean and loose. 

After that stage has been allowed to dry I start building layers of translucent and opaque layers in a 'fatter' paint, the outcome is that some areas have the early layers showing through and other areas have a lot of opaque paint, this hopefully gives an illusion of depth to the fur. I also decided to change the background colour at this stage to frame the wolf head and once dried the final painting can be seen on display at the exhibition!

Visiting Art Group

I had a lovely couple of hours last week showing a local art group around my 'Into the Wild' exhibition. Thank you to all who turned out in the rather bitter weather to listen to my pontifications! If you check the photograph below they all seem to be smiling so hopefully I didn't go on too long!

Furness Abbey in the snow

I've just spent the morning at Furness Abbey taking a few photographs, I should have done a spot of painting too but am afraid that I wasn't quite able to cope with biting Siberian wind for long enough!
I'm so lucky to live just around the corner to this beautiful place, it really is one of my favourite places on earth and as an added bonus I got to see the two resident buzzards flying overhead at very close range, worth every minute of braving the arctic chill!

European Wolf in oil

I've been playing around with oil paint for the last couple of years now. A totally new medium for me as previously most of my work was completed in Acrylic paint as I thought it involved far less fuss than oil paint, just a splash of water to make it pliable and away you go!
Thankfully I tried oil and yes it does need a degree in alchemy to work out the additives and fat over lean and do's and don'ts but got to say I love it!

I thought I would post a couple of stages of my painting 'European Wolf' which is now in my exhibition 'Into the Wild'. No doubt I might change my style and the mediums I choose as I progress but at this stage am quite happy with the effects I'm getting.

The first picture shows the early lean stages after working out my basic composition, I'm just trying to look at the big shapes but can add or take an element here or there to strengthen the composition.
The second picture is the finished painting, obviously there are quite a few layers before I build up to this stage but I am constantly looking for which areas to keep loose and which to tighten for my finished composition.

'Into the Wild' New Exhibition at the Dock Museum

Well, my new blog is up and running, finally!
As well as my new blog, my latest exhibition has just opened at the Dock Museum, Barrow-in-Furness so I thought I would post one or two pictures from the preview night, thanks to all who came!