Portraits Gallery: Celebs

I have taken to portraits for sometime now, some of the portraits I did recently are here. Just don't know if they can pass for the celebs they are supposed to portray! I only hope they are not unduly offended!

Have a nice day! Thanks for stopping by!

Patchings Art Festival

Last Saturday I was at the Patchings Art Festival, near Nottingham. It was such a great experience and how I missed this annual art event in the past! It is a 4 day festival but I could manage to be there on only one day. I carefully selected Saturday when most of my favourite painters demonstrated their skills and shared their knowledge. I had a chance to speak with David Curtis, disappointed though that he was working on an oil painting at that time. Met my teacher and friend Peter Woolley who was kind enough to give me some tips on foliage. (Use very little of Prussian blue in the mix and pass the cadmium yellow for green most of the time.)Attended 2 of the demos of Charles Evans which were very lively. He uses only 8 colours and 4 brushes! It was shocking to know one of the colours is Hooker's Green, (which he admitted as the same as admitting oneself to be alcoholic, but he says he can make myriad greens mixing it with the other colours in his palette). See his picture below:

 David Bellamy painted a coastal scene with rocks and mountains. I learnt how Yellow Ochre pushes out the other colours but gives a lively variation to the mountains. I saw Fiona Peart doing 2 landscapes, the place was jam packed and I could only stand and watch. She showed how to represent a misty background with clever use of gouache with a slight blue  tinge. Peter Woolley and me admired the way David Curtis paints his architectural subjects so well. One other artist I liked very much was Trevor Lingard, I saw him  do his wet in wet dark toned landscape. For me the find of the Festival was Robert Newcombe, it was a revelation talking to him and watching him do his what he calls 'impressonistic line and wash' using a sharpened match stick in place of a drawing pen. I admired his work greatly and he presented me with one of his sharpened match sticks! I tried  line and wash watercolours using his match stick just to test how good it could be, here are my attempts. Though I did these in a hurry to recapture his style, I plan to use this method in a few paintings. I always had a few reservations about line and wash but my mental block is gone. It is a really new rewarding experience.

I thought summer was here!

It is very fleeting, the feeling of summer, you can never trust. Nothing is as it seems to be! Anyway as the saying goes, make hay while the sun shines, whenever it does in these parts! I thought I ran into an artist's block during which period nothing came right! I always try to do something out of my way and loose to break out of that block. I saw this photo in the Sunday Times and decided to do some bodyscape in the beachscape! Gave myself half an hour and let the brush wander loosely on the beach! Thanks for looking! Have a nice (summer) day!

Hereford Cathedral, view from the river Wye

The Cathedral in Hereford offered magnificent views from anywhere in the town. I liked this one from the banks of the river Wye because of the painterly opportunities it offered to paint the trees, water and the birds thereof. To include all elements I selected the vertical format and slightly herded in the surroundings to fit the frame. May be if I am planning to do it again, I will try the landscape format. This was done on Arches 300lb Not surface, half imperial. Thanks for viewing, have a nice day!

The Church of St Margarets Newton, Herefordshire

While attending the literary festival at the 'Hay on the Wye' last weekend, we stayed in a small but lovely parish of St Margarets Newton, some 10 miles away from the Hay. It was on a most scenic part of  Herefordshire and an early morning walk took us to this lovely old church with the sun just coming out after a day of rain. I wish I had brought my sketch book with me, but the early morning scene was so beautiful and was well etched in my mind.The feeling of early morning sunlight has been well captured in my painting in which I had pushed the focus to the golden mean area. The orderly tombstones had been replaced by some loose ones to give some 'life', (I mean to the painting). Done Bockingboard 485gms Rough half sheet. Comments and criticisms welcome! Thanks for viewing!