Underpainting complete

Completed the underpainting for my latest fox painting and its now been set aside to dry for a few days.Whilst it's drying i need to find myself an interesting tree stump to photograph and use as a reference for the tree stump i'll be placing to the right rear of the painting.

New Fox painting underway

With this painting i'm going to be re-visiting a subject that i first completed as a graphite drawing some 13 years ago now.Foxes,as those who follow my blog regularly will know,are one of my favourite subjects for drawings and paintings and i have completed many fox artworks.This one was published as a limited edition lithograph print right at the outset of my publishing career and was the first of many prints to sell out while i was working exclusively in graphite.When i started with oils this image ,along with a few others,was one of those that i hoped to one day produce a coloured version of.I like to have several paintings underway at any one time to keep my spirits up as sometimes i find myself getting a bit bogged down and bored with paintings which inevitably leads to very slow progress and  a finished job that never feels quite worthy.Having cut and primed my mdf board i went straight into the drawing of the fox outline without any initial colouring of the gesso this time after discovering how much i dislike coloured gesso whilst preparing my leopard painting.Luckily i still have all the photo references i took of the animal as well as a copy of the original print still hanging here at home to glean references from.i intend for it to be much the same as the original pencil version although perhaps simplified a little in terms of items within the painting and more concentrated on the lighting of the piece than could be achieved using graphite.I think i'm going to go with a dark background and a tree stump behind the fox but i want to try and almost have the fox highlighted by a pool of light during its slumbers.This idea may change depending on how it pans out as i try and paint it.using larger brushes ive used undiluted oils for the underpainting but as is my preferred technique ive pushed the paint around a lot and scrubbed it into the surface of the board so that the initial coat is very thinly applied.i love this very 'free' stage of the painting,completing areas very quickly and thinking and mixing on the go as opposed to the more studied approach i'll take to the detailed coats.This is the image as of halfway through the day,the sun came out and i couldn't resist abandoning the studio for a few hours as weve seen so little of it this year,hopefully the initial underpainting will be completed this evening.

Leopard painting

The first stage of this painting is now completed.I like to work from the back to the front when painting and drawing and so the furthest elements of the background have been completed first.after purchasing some ready mixed colours to help me out with the dreaded greens i found they were just as inadequate as my previous attempts at mixing and so i sought advice on mixing greens from some very experienced painter colleagues.Thanks to the wise words i now feel ive finally got a handle on mixing greens and am rather pleased with the colours in this painting thus far.much of this background will eventually have elements of the immediate foreground overlapping it and so ive tried to complete this element a little looser than my usual style by using larger brushes and mixing many of the colurs on the board itself.working on a painting of this scale for the first time i can now appreciate the larger handled brushes and rather like the looser,bolder brushstroke kind of approach even though at the moment it still feels entirely unnatural to me.Next up is to tackle the tree that the leopard is resting in and again i hope to be able to complete it a little loosely leaving the cat only in tight detail.

Into the unknown

Ok so there i was thinking about what on earth i should attempt to paint next when for no apparent reason i took it upon myself to try something a little bigger and more complicated than i had attempted in oils thus far.The painting is the largest ive attempted to date at 33" x 24" and ,frankly,if it ever gets finished it will be a miracle.after looking at techniques employed by many other fine artists i decided that i would add some yellow ochre-ish colour to my final gesso coat to rid myself of the initial stark whiteness of the background only to find that i actually prefer my stark white backgrounds to the coloured version.Serves me right for ignoring the little voice in my head telling me not to be so artyfarty about it and continue instead with my normal working practice.Lesson learned,keep it simple,if it works for me as is then ignore popular protocol.i have started to underpaint the various components of the picture and started with the plotting of the spots on the leopards coat,i have to admit to finding it mind-numbingly boring and so rapidly moved on to other areas.i do particularly like to procrastinate and so blocking in large areas with simple colours suits my working style as i can use this un-taxing part of the painting to think about how on earth i'm going to tackle some of the other more complex parts of the painting.my main nemesis,green,awaits in the form of leaves in the background.ive never had a fondness for green and the only shade of green i seem adept at mixing is the one i refer to as 'hideous' green.in an attempt to overcome my shortfall in the 'green' department i am shunning all good advice about mixing greens and have ordered some pre-mixed versions to hopefully give me a headstart.as the painting is so large i thought i might adopt a left to right working pattern so as not to put my arm in it too often hence some areas are more worked up than others.suffice to say that i anticipate this painting will take some time to complete and in the meantime i have a few other ideas about to start taking shape on freshly prepared boards 

NEWA 2012 exhibition opens

                                                 Avocet reflection SOLD NEWA 2012
NEWA(National exhibition of wildlife art) 2012 opened its doors for the first day of its annual exhibition and once again got off to a flying start with plenty of sales including my little avocet oil above.The show venue is a stunning glass atrium at the Gordale garden centre on the Wirral,uk and the show runs from 13-29th july.if your'e a fan of wildlife art then this show is definitely a must see.the full address for the show is Gordale garden centre,Chester high road,Burton,Wirral,ch64 8tf

currently working on some compositions and ideas for oil paintings and finding my attempts to cut and gesso boards being thwarted by the awful wet weather we are experiencing at the moment.i have to cut the mdf boards outside as the dust can be quite nasty and even once they're cut they require 3-4 coats of gesso which must be sanded down after each application.And so i'm dodging the showers and slowly but surely the boards are getting nearer to completion and then i can make a start on some ideas.to save myself from going slowly crazy in the studio i sometimes resort to sketching to fill in the time whilst waiting for the latest downpour to end,this is a little avocet sketch i completed in an afternoon yesterday.i hope to be able to post some more oils soon.

Fox study complete

Finished this painting this afternoon,although as usual i'll leave it for a few days now and then tinker with it.the completed painting measures 20" x 19".