Monday, October 3, 2011

Sweet Pea alla prima

sweet pea in a glass painting
Sweet Pea (oil 12 x 18 cm)
Sweet pea in a glass.  About 1 hour. Glass could have been better!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Gmini 402 alla prima

mp3 player gmini painting
Gmini 402 in oils
This is the next in the series of small oil studies.  This was a blast to do. It may be because I am Quite attached to this little mp3 player. It is an Archos Gmini 402 which also has a camcorder.  Archos were out there working on mp3 players before the ipod launched.
It has been overtaken by newer models but this one does what I want it to do really well which is play mp3s. It is robust easy to use and I principally use it when I am cycling.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Autumn leaf alla prima

Autumn leaf   (oil on oil painting paper 18 x 12 cm)
The smaller size made this achievable in about 1 h.  I think I will stick to this kind of size for these practice studies.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

alla prima orange


I decided to do a series of smaller still life studies to get some more practice in oils. 

Orange (Oil on oil painting paper 30 x 20 cm)

This took about 1 1/2 hours.  after completing this I decided to cut the size of these down to half to get them to a more finished state in a shorter time.  More to come...

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Fishermen Photoshop Study

This is another study of an image from the same collection as this.

In contrast with the last study I did not use a value study using overlays to add colour.  This one I painted directly which for me is much easier to control but the trade off is flexibility.  

fishermen in a boat at sunset fishing with net photoshop
Final

Reference
Blocking

Colour









Sunday, September 4, 2011

Water Carrier - Photoshop

This work is based on an image which is part of a collection donated by the Matson Photo Service to the USA Library of Congress
The collection spans 1898 to 1946 and is mostly black and white images taken in the Middle East.
This is a colourised digital painting in Photoshop based on an image of a water carrier. 
man as watercarrier in photoshop








Thursday, September 1, 2011

Church Interior

Practicing a environment.  Photo reference in Photoshop.  I need to practise a lot more!


Monday, August 15, 2011

Mayo Summer Landscape

This is an oil painting I worked on for the past few weeks.  It is based on a photograph I took.  All too many of those kinds of days this summer. The sky was dark and ominous but the sun still shone out of shot.  The farmer had cut the grass the previous day cutting around the poles.  
oil painting countryside landscape ireland Mayo

This is the drawing gridded out as was the photograph. 

I did all this work in one sitting. Got a lot done in a short time.  Left the poles until the paint was dry. 
Started to work on the detail of poles.
Still fiddling about with details.  Added in wires. 


Finished out highlights. 

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Portrait Practice

Have been putting off doing some serious drawing practice.  To make up for it I thought I would have a go at doing some portraits.  These are all from photo or picture  reference in Photoshop. 



Still Here

  A year since my last post here but that does not mean I have forgotten.  I stop by from time to time and this still remains the most compr...