Busy Week

 Well, it’s been a bit of a busy week. The story so far. I’m a full time English teacher – which I’m not apologising for, it’s not a crime. (yet) Now, we’ve been teaching from home since the middle of December. There are occasions when I’ve taught in school, which is still open for the children of essential workers and particularly vulnerable children, but for the most part I’ve been at home. This does not mean that my time has been my own during school hours, though. Making a meaningful remote learning lesson can involve lots of things – making a ten minute video, and editing it, for instance, can take over an hour. Then there’s sitting at the computer, answering questions, giving advice, marking work during school hours.I’m not asking for sympathy, but I’m using it as an explanation of why I was so eager to paint in this last week. This has been half term week. Normally, during this half term I go sketching aboard somewhere. This time last year was my very last trip, when I went to Reykjavik. A year before that it was Stockholm. Well, there was no trip this year, obviously, so I was glad to use the free time to produce three acrylic canvases – the 3 wild west pictures from my last post.

Prior to that, though, I’d been painting this series of vehicles in ink and watercolour, and more recently making timelapse videos and tutorials of the process for my Youtube Channel. I can easily make one of these in an evening after working hours, you see. But last week, I was spending easily 6 or 7 hours a day on the canvases, so I didn’t make any more.

Yesterday, though, I made another video, or in fact a pair of them – a short timelapse and a tutorial of this VW Karmann Ghia. The painting stage of this one was not without its traumas – if you go to my Youtube Channel you can watch it if you like.

Karmann Ghia Tutorial Youtube

Karmann Ghia Timelapse

Selling my work is not my primary motivation, but I won’t deny that it is nice when it happens. Within about half an hour of posting my first wild west picture I had sold it, and then later in the week I sold two of the earlier vehicle pictures. That means that I’ve sold almost all of those earlier ones.

I’ve also had a commission to paint a horse racing scene in acrylics. This will have to wait until next weekend for me to make a start with it – I have just about all the materials I need except time. I’ve also started my next pair of videos – an E type jaguar – but I haven’t filmed the painting stage yet.

Acrylic Painting: Wild West 3

 I'e really mixed feelings about this third and final painting of my wild west trilogy, or triptych. I had a clear enough vision for it, and sketched it out. It took a whole day to paint the background. The sky was too dark and I had to lighten it before I could paint in the hills. Then the hills were far too light. I darkened them, which had the effect of concealing the blotchiness of them, which was all to the good, but made them too dark. So then I lightened them. Then finally I got to do the green hills and the yellow haze, which is the thing I really like about this picture. Finally the scrubby ground at the bottom of the picture. 

I was really looking forward to painting in the cowboy. But . . . I dunno, it just isn't really what I was going for. I like the colour on the horse, and I think that the head is well done, but its legs. . . they're stumpy, I'm afraid. Isn't it typical. I'd say that I really struggle with 'natural' backgrounds, but I'm decent at horses and figures. Here I think I have one of the most successful natural backgrounds I've ever painted, yet it's the figure that lets it down. 

Well, it is what it is. What it does do is complete my cowboy triptych: - 

I have thoroughly enjoyed making all three of these paintings. I think that the far right- the first - is the most successful. Seems the public think so as well - I had an offer to buy it within an hour of first posting it on the net. 

Acrylic Painting: Wild West 2: Gandalf the Gunslinger

 My first Wild West painting was far more romantic. This one I was aiming for the more sinister aspects of the west, the grizzled, dirty old gunslinger. I found this one a lot harder than the previous. For one thing, getting the relationship between the lighter and darker areas wasn't easy. I originally made the sky far too deep a blue, and twice had to lighten it and weaken the colour to get it to a point where it stayed in the background where it belongs. Then there was the buildings on the right. They have to be in shadow, but the details on the door way and signage also need to be clearly discernable. I painted them, and then had to dull them down twice before I got to the stage you can see here. 

As for the gunfighter , I'm not desperately unhappy with him. I just couldn't get his face even looking human when I made the original sketch onto the canvas, but I'm not unhappy with how it looks painted. Only . . . well, when I'd painted the face there was something about it bugging me. And then I realised what it was. It may just be me, but I think he has a definite look of Sir Ian McKellern about his features. Hence me christening the painting Gandalf the Gunslinger. 

I don't think it's as good a painting as Wild West 1 - I had an offer to buy that one within an hour of posting it on the net. But I did think at several times during the process that this one was becoming an absolute disaster, and it's turned out better than I thought it was going to. I plan to complete a wild west trilogy with on more painting. We've had romance with the first, danger and the threat of death in the second, and in the third we'll have action, natural scenery, and joie de vivre. Well, that's the idea, anyway. 

Acrylic Painting - Wild West

 Okay, so I was watching the TV a few days ago. I can't remember which channel I was watching, nor which programme. It made that much of an impression on me. Well, actually it did to some extent, because I don't remember the context, but there was a wild west painting or poster on it, and I thought - Hey, I could do that!-

My original thought was to do a cowboy on a horse . However when I was researching, looking at reference photographs, that idea receded onto the back burner. Instead, this is what I came up with - 

I look at it, and I can't help thinking of captions for it -

"Come inside mi chico - I have something hot and spicy for you!"

"Well, Conchita, darlin', I hope it's a big bowl of chilli, cos all of this shootin' varmints sure makes a man powerful hungry!" No, not great, is it? Pleased with the painting, though.

New Painting: Asleep on the Tube

 

I just fancied a quick acrylic today. For this is an acrylic, not a watercolour, even though I ended up applying it as such. My original idea was to have this paper painting as part of a diptych, juxtaposing his one with a painting of a scene of Londoners sleeping on the platform of Holborn station during the Blitz. And you never know, I may yet do so. As it often does, the scanner has made a couple of rather idiosyncratic choices about the way that it picks out certain of the colours. I do rather like this, though - it's closer to what I was actually trying to do than I often get with acrylic or watercolour on paper. 

Acrylic on A4 paper Horse Racing Painting: 2

 Here's where I left the painting yesterday:-

I wasn't sure whether I was going to leave it until next Saturday, but after a good lunch this afternoon, I felt the urge to complete it.

The big job was painting in the stands, but that honestly didn't take a huge amount of time. The houses and the stands on the extreme right followed, and then the figure by the stands and his car. After that it was just filling in fiddly little bits, and finessing some of what I did yesterday.

Is it the best thing I've ever painted? No. On a subject like this, which has a lot of horses in it, I'd want a bigger canvas rather than a piece of A4 acrylic paper, which I've used for this. But it's quite nice, if I'm honest. This is the finished picture - see what you think yourself.

Acrylic on A4 paper project :1)

 Yes, you thought you'd got off lightly today, didn't you? Well, the thing is, I finished the large canvas board painting so quickly today, and the painting mood was still upon me. Being a little short on canvasses earlier today, I decided to do a smaller painting on paper. I have a couple of pads of acrylic paper I was either given or bought some time ago, and I've used it for watercolour before, but never for acrylics, so there was a challenge. I thoroughly enjoyed painting the horse race, so I decided to stick with the theme.

I began, of course, by sketching out the composition on the paper.

One of the thingd i like about this scene is that it is from this year, and all of the jockeys are wearing face masks - although at least one of them hasn't got his nose in it - naughty boy. Using acrylics always gives you the choice of using it thickly, like oil paint, or using it watered down, like watercolour. I started with the sky, in watercolour mode.

Now, I do like he dramatic sky here, but even though I'd stretched the paper and taped it down to the board prior to applying any paint, the paper looked awfully wrinkly . I crossed my fingers that it would smooth out as it dried. I went much thicker with the turf, but in all honesty it's very difficult guage how effective it will be at this stage of a painting.

Now, okay, by rights, if I was being disciplined about the painting, then I would have done the rest of the background before starting on the horses and jockeys. But look, this wee A4 painting is really just forfun, and for a challenge. If it sells when it's finished, whoop de do, but it won't bring a lot anyway. I wanted to paint the horsies and the jockeys next. . . so I did.

I was, at least, sensible enough to paint in the starting gates and the sky bet sign to the left of the nearest jockey and horse. My thoughts at this stage were - well, I know I always think my paintings are rubbish when I'm in the early stages like now. . . but this one really IS rubbish. Thankfully, I've learned to ignore that voice. I painted in the bodies of the other horses.

This was a nice stage in the process since you can see each of the 4 horses at a different stage of completion - the furthest left is complete and so is the jockey, with only the tack and the reins needing work. The second horse is finished bar the tack, but the jockey is unpainted. The third horse is in the stage of having layers of shading built up, and the 4th horse has only just had one layer of colour applied as yet. 

Having completely painted all 4 horses, and started work on the rest of the jockeys, I'd reached the stage where I started to really like the way that the painting was turning out. In a way, I was a bit sorry at this stage that I hadn't used a 20x16 canvas board for this scene, since bigger allows you to do more with the detail, But then, if this had been that much bigger I wouldn't have been able to come half this far in just the one session. Incidentally the sky was well dry by this point, and I was relieved to see that the paper had smoothed out nicely. 

So this is where I've finished for today. Horses and jockeys are done, and for a final flourish I painted in the trees to the right. 

Acrylic Painting Horse Racing Project:3

 So, if you were with me last week, you might remember that I really pushed on with my horsie painting and by the end of Saturday's session this is how far I'd got:-

Looking at the photograph, there's really two obvious areas which were unfinished - the turf and the crowd. I didn't do any work on the painting last Sunday, so it was only today that I took up my brushes again. The plan, which I stuck to, was to work on the turf from left to right, then paint in the shadows beneath the horses. To be honest, this sort of job is a bit of a monotonous task, but it's best to take your time, have patience, and plug away at it until it's done, telling yourself that although this is not the most enjoyable part of painting, it should make your picture look better. 

When I'd painted in the shadows on the grass, there was only really the crowd left to do. Experience from painting my commission of Frankel the wonder horse, and my Racing from Newmarket picture, I knew you can get good results from minimal detail with the crowd, so that's pretty much what I went for. 

All in all it took less than two hours to finish - and that's including the time it took to hang up a load of washing and put another load in the machine. I'm pleased with the finished painting, but then I usually am when I finish a painting, so I'll keep coming back to it to get a more objective appraisal over the next month or two

Acrylic Project: Horse Racing Painting:2

 Here's where I was at the end of last week's first session on this painting.

You know, I’ve been looking forward to getting back to this painting all week. At the start of the day I was desperate to start painting the horses, but for once I managed to curb by natural impulse to go at it like a bull at a gate. The plan all along has been to paint in the advertising boards below the rails, and you can see this in this first of today's photos.

There’s still a little bit of work to do on the Vauxhall lettering, which need just a few dark shadows, but that will have to wait until my next session.

This meant I could start on the nearer of the two horses. The photo demonstrates the way I went about this. I started with a very light, watery layer, which I gradually darkened to build in areas of shadow, which gave the horse’s muscles their definition. The yellow ochre on the left foreleg was only meant to lie underneath the darker colour I was going to apply on top of it, however, as I built up the other layers on the parts of the horse surrounding it, the more it occurred to me that the ochre itself could well do the job.

The next photo shows exactly where it was I reached Deception Point 2. 

With apologies to Dan Brown, from whom I nicked the name, Deception Point 1 is the point in the painting process where you start to think that what you are producing is rubbish and should be thrown away. Deception Point 2 is the point where you start to think you’re producing an amazing piece of work. Both feelings are of course very deceptive, hence the name. Still, with the horse’s head painted, I could for the first time start to get a feel of what the finished painting might look like. Which was as good a point as any to break for lunch.

After lunch the temptation was to crack straight on with the second horse. Yet I made myself wait so that I could apply finishing touches to the horse, and in particular paint in the reins and tackle. 

Be honest, don’t those few small details, like the orange reins, the blue and red bands beneath the saddle, make a difference?

So now I could concentrate on the second horse.

This photo demonstrates the method I was using. I painted the legs and head with a thin layer of yellow ochre, while the body and neck were painted a darker brown mixed with crimson, and watered down. I’d already built up quite a lot of the shadows by the time I took this, and the darker shadows saw me mixing the dark brown with some pthalo blue. By this stage I’d spent maybe 4 and a half hours today, but I could see me easily achieving my target of painting boards and both horses today.

This is where I finished for the day after about 6 hours’ work all told. Not only are both horses painted in, but so are parts of the crowd, done a little remedial ork on the sky by the horse's head on the right and I’ve also started working on the grass. One more good session of anything between three and four hours should see a finish.

Acrylic Project: Horse Race Painting

Yes, my friends, I enjoyed spending a proportion of the last two weekends making an acrylic painting so much, that I've started another one this week. Last time out I painted a Glasgow tram. Well, I don't want to saturate the market, as it were, so this time out I'm making another horse racing painting. 

It's a funny thing. I don't bet on horse races (apart from the Grand National - last time I had the winner was 1991). I don't watch horse racing. If I were to list my favourite sports, horse racing would, I'm sorry, be closer to the bottom than the top of the list. But I enjoy painting horse racing scenes. I'm not really sure why that should be. Still, I do enjoy painting horse races, and I've not done badly with these paintings over the years. I've sold every acrylic horse racing painting I've ever made, and was also commissioned to do a painting of Frankel the wonder horse too.

I was late starting this morning - so late, in fact, that it was just about the afternoon. I was sketching, you see. Still, when I put down the ink pens and picked up the pencil, I sketched the basic composition onto the canvas.

I set out to make the horses and the jockeys larger than in any painting I've made before. They aren't as big as I envisaged they would be, but I like the size they are oin this composition. 

Compared with other race paintings I've made , the background is pretty uncomplicated with this one - sky above, grass below, not a lot in between. So I made the decision to paint the base for the sky and the grass to begin.

Both sky and especially the grass will need a lot more painting before we're finished, but I was glad to get this down to start. 

One of the things which makes horse racing paintings fun to paint is the brightness of the jockeys' silks, and so this was what I really planned to concentrate on for pretty much the rest of this painting session.

One of the reasons for only putting on a very light coat of paint for both sky and ground is that when I start applying full, bold colour to the jockeys' silks, they really start to pop out from the canvas.

I got this far, and had to make the decision whether I was going to start on the horses. With the best will int he world, I wouldn't have finished them tonight, even if I rushed, so I decided to just paint the basic emerald green of the cloth beneath the saddles, and then leave it there for today. So this is how far we've got today:-

 We're at the stage here where I have to tell myself that it will look completely different once the Horses have been painted, and the after that, when the backgrounds have been properly painted in. When I start the next session I'll have a couple of decisions to make. Shall I go for the horses, or do more work on the background? I'm certainly planning to do the advertising boards and the railings, probably before I tackle the horses. 

Glasgow Tram - Acrylic Project - 3

 I recall that I did say last week that I thought that I was unlikely to be able to find time to work on the tram in a school week, and I was right. Yeah, it's a pain, but painting trams doesn't pay all the bills (yet) and teaching English does.

Here's where we finished on Sunday:-

It seemed a convenient place to stop, and I'd guess it took between 6 and 7 hours to get this far. The plan when I took up my tools this morning was to firstly sketch in the rest of the outlines of the windows, paint in the remaining shop front - paint a background colour for the walls between the windows, paint in the frames, paint in the brickwork, paint in the details in the windows, do any remedial work necessary on what we did last time, and finally, if all else had gone well, paint in the roadway shadows and cobbles, sign and date the whole thing.

This is my first progress photo today

By this time you can see that I'd sketched the outlines and then immediately painted in the background colour for the walls. My feeling was this - if I painted these before I did the remaining shopfront, then the walls could dry while I was doing the shopfront, and it would be easier to paint on frames and bricks on dry paint. By the way, at the top of the photo is just shadow cast through the window by the bright morning Autumn sunshine. 

Having now completed the shop fronts I was just starting to be able to visualise the finished painting. This is a dangerous time for me. In the early stages of painting, I tend to think what I do is rubbish and want to give it up and start again. Experience has taught me the value of patience and perseverence. However this often gives way to a stage of believing that the current work is going to turn out to be the best thing I've ever done. This is invariably equally untrue. You might also notice that as well as finishing the shop fronts, I've just added some colour inside what will become the windows. 

I've painted this typically scottish kind of brickwork several times before, most notably on painting of Glasgow, but also one of Edinburgh. I love painting this kind of brickwork, the tones ranging from warm honey to bournville dark chocolate, with undertones of purples and greys. Hopefully you can see what a difference it makes when the windows have been painted in as well.

Not far off from a finish now. This is where I stopped for lunch, after about 3 hours ' work this morning. The building is complete now, obviously. Can you notice what else I did between this picture and the last? Well, firstly I lightened the green at the front of the tram, and a couple of patches n the side. I like the fact that the tram is so bright and vibrant against the more restrained building and shop fronts, but I thought it could stand to be just toned down slightly. Also, if you look underneath the tram I've done just a little work adding more shadow, and I've painted the tram lines. 

I could have stopped there. However, I do think that without the shadows on the roadway, the poor old ar looks as if it's floating somewhat. So here's the finished picture, after I put the shadow on the roadway, and added some definition to the cobblework.

It's far too soon for me to give a realistic appraisal of my own work here - it'll take at least a week before I'll be able to be at all objective, but I certainly think it's good enough to put up for sale - and that's the next thing I shall be doing with it.  At the very least I think it fares well be comparison with two of my other Glasgow street n' tram scenes - although to be fair, both of these were 16x12, not 20x16 like this one.

Acrylic Project: Tram

 It's been a good week, First of all I sold my acrylic painting of the London Tram on Highgate Hill: - 

London Tram on Highgate Hill

I like this 20x16 painting a lot, but I've had two years of pleasure from it now, and so it just felt like time to let it go. Then, a couple of days later, I also sold this painting of a vintage Lisbon tram, based on one of my friends' holiday snaps.

Vintage Lisbon Tram

Again, it's a painting I'm pretty find of. I painted it while I was off work with depression in 2017 and I've had a hankering to visit Lisbon ever since. Still, it's quite a while since I painted anything in acrylic, and even then it was a copy of Frank Brangwyn's painting of a market in Tunisia. So I reckoned that if I sold a couple then I'd have a couple of display spaces on my wall that need filling, which would act as a spur to get me working again. Well, that and I'd have a few quid into the bargain. 

There's no prizes for guessing that I was going to make another tram painting. I love trams, and I've sold over 15 paintings or drawings I've made of trams over the last 5 years. Being as yesterday was Saturday and not a school day I panned a start by going to the post office at 9 am to post the Lisbon painting. That changed when my wife, daughter and grandson needed a lift to Neath, and I didn't get back from posting the painting until some time after 10. I couldn't rouse myself to get going until after 12.

Normally I'd sketch out as much of a design as possible before applying paint to canvas. I made a conscious decision to do this one differently. I sketched the outline of the tram to the size I wanted, then applied the detail in the tram, and then just the barest details of the background - the edge of the building to the left of the picture, the figure by the pavement edge and the car to the right, and the treeline. 

I'm not as quick as I once was, but I doubt I was more than about 20 minutes sketching. I was experiencing that wonderful frisson you get when you're about to start applying acrylic to a canvas. The obvious choice was to paint in the sky first. It's not perfect - I like the streaky clouds, but I plan to do a little more work next session to soften it and also to tone down the brightness a little. 

Most of the session was spent working on the tram itself. The big idea was to get the main body done, that's the window framework, the green panels and the orange panels. I also started work on the underside. It would probably have been more sensible and more disciplined to have painted in the trees to the right before I actually started on tram or car, but hey, I'm not a professional artist and I don't claim to paint in a traditional (or sensible) way. So I painted the car, and only then moved onto the trees. Using combinations of three hues of green and one blue and a touch of grey, I'm really rather pleased with the way that the trees turned out. I painted in the figure with one colour, but I'm going to apply detail to him in the next session. Finally, I finished by applying a watery wash of blue grey to the ground. I stopped where I did because I want the ground in front of the tram to have a farm more yellowy tinge.

I took this o my phone when I'd finished applying paint for the session. I can see that the sky, particularly in the centre of it, needs some remedial work, and I want to soften the blue a bit. The ground needs some detail applying to it, but there' still tramlines and shadow to be added, so hopefully the car and the tram won't continue to look as if they are floating on top of it. The front of the tram is too orange and will also need some work.

I'd been at it for the best part of 3 and a half hours by this point, and didn't want to apply any more paint in this session. Still, rather than finishing at this point, it did strike me that I might well want to start painting the buildings on the right in the next session, so I began to draw in some outlines and guidelines. By the tie I packed up and cleared away for the day I'd been working for a shade over 4 hours in total. 

I have mixed feelings about the painting at this stage. I'm pretty pleased with the composition - I like the position and the size of the tram. But it's at the stage where you have to have faith that it's going to get better as you add details and work on it. I'm finding it difficult to envisage what the ground will look like once the shadows and some cobble details have been added, but I have to have faith that it will work. Everything on the painting is looking pretty bright, but hopefully the dark shop level of the buildings will give a contrast, as will the dark details visible through the windows of the tram. The one grey window I've already painted in just gives a hint about how this may turn out. 

Even when I do make plans I very rarely stick to them. Allowing for that, then, I would like to finish the tram in the next session. I also think it would be a good idea to work on the sky before tackling the upper portions of the building, although I would like to get the shop fronts in. I will also lay down a base colour for the roadway in front of the tram, although finishing off the roadway will probably be one of the last jobs that I'll do, after the building. It's taken about 4 hours to get this far. Going on recent form I reckon there's maybe 10 hours left in this one now

Elephant Painting - Finished

So I said on Tuesday that I'd probably finish the painting in the next session. Well, it looks like I was right. Here it is - signed, dated and finished: -

I have to be honest and say that I'm pretty satisfied with what I've done here. Up to now I've only ever been pleased with my horses when it comes to animals. A couple of years ago I painted a camel and a stag and to be honest I didn't think that much of either painting. But this is pretty close to what I wanted to achieve - the whole point when I started sketching onto the canvas was to try to get across the monumentality of an African elephant, and I'm happy that I've done that to the best of my ability.

Negative points? Well, looking objectively I think that the head is just a little too wide. However I am pleased with the use of shade and shadow on the body. I'm really pleased with the foliage as well. If you've been following the progress of this painting you'll know that just the foliage alone took hours. Here's a comparison between the painting with just the foliage and a hardly painted in elephant outline, and the finished painting: -

Elephant Update: Supplementary

I managed to sneak in another hour or so's session this evening. I cracked on with the rear leg and the body, so much so that there's relatively little left to do, and I'd say that I'm likely to finish next session. Here's the latest: -

Elephant Update 4

Here's where we finished yesterday:-

So my priorities for this morning were to finish the right ear, and the right foreleg. Here's my progress photo after 1 hour:-

It doesn't look as if I achieved a great deal in that first hour, does it? Well, let's be fair, you can spend a lot of time just thinking and working a plan of attack in a first hour, and if it pays dividends then it's time well spent in my opinion. You can see that I have actually done quite a bit more work on the right ear, and started painting my way down the foreleg.  This is next photo is after about another half an hour:-

The leg looks a lot better now, and has joined nicely with the foot which I actually painted in a couple of days ago - still not as disciplined as I could be in my approach, I'm afraid. By this stage I'd made up my mind that the trunk needs quite a bit more work, but I've decided to leave that until all of the legs and body are painted in. So this last photo is at the end of the session, after almost three hours in total.

The biggest development between this last phot and the previous is that there's been some work done on the body. So we really should be seeing now what the finished painting will look like.