For a while now I have been wanting to try my hand at portraiture, but fear has consistently got in the way. I can draw a face, I wasn’t too worried about that… It was making the face look like the person that I was drawing that I was terrified of not getting right! I…
More botanicals
I was commissioned to draw some of my favourite flowers for a home in Wales… I love drawing flowers. They inspire me and are always food for my soul so I am always a little sad when the commission is complete and I have to hand the drawings over to the client. Some are harder…
Faux headboards and associated trickery
For years now I have been looking for a headboard. I wasn’t very keen on some of the more solid things I have found for sale at places like ‘The One’ or ‘The Marina’ and the more ornately local flavoured decor didn’t particularly appeal to me either. Then Phil found something he thought I might…
Yellow Daffodil
Another commission for a daffodil….. It would seem as the summer draws to a close and cold winters loom on the horizon, people are already looking forward to seeing the wild daffodils in the midst of their spring bloom. When I think of yellow I think of my favourite poem by Wordsworth ‘I wandered Lonely…
A Knights Tale
Living with a creative person who paints for a living my family just assume I can paint anything! I cant, but I’m learning fast! A while back I was asked by my son to draw a spaceship he had built for the game EVE Online that he was an avid player of. I am not…
Daffodil
A commission for a Welsh lady living in the UAE who misses the wild daffodils growing in the Welsh countryside back home…. Palette: Titanium white, Burnt Umber, Cadmium yellow light, Cadmium orange, Cadmium red light, Hansa Yellow orange, cadmium lemon, phthalo blue (green shade), burnt sienna and greengold. Daffodil Acrylic on stretched canvas 40cm X…
Hands, hands and more hands
At about the time I decided I needed to improve my drawing skills I started becoming discontented with our en suite bathroom. We travel a fair amount, and seeing this is the 5th country we have lived in, and it is unlikely we will settle here the house we live in is rented. It is…
Abstract reflections
This was a study of a stainless steel goblet. It had a highly reflective silver surface which captured the light and abstract shapes reflected in it beautifully. It was done with a very limited palette on canvas with a neutral grey ground colour. Colours used: •Titanium white •Burnt umber •Ultramarine blue •Mars black •Burnt sienna…
2nd RAK Fine Arts Festival 2014
This weekend heralded in the 2nd RAK Fine Arts Festival starting with a gala event hosted in the Banyan Tree al Wadi. It was a perfect spring evening (just right temps, and not too hot yet) in an idyllic setting in the desert just outside Ras al Khaimah. The official grand opening where all the…
A toast…
This small glass study was undertaken with the idea of learning to deal with reflective surfaces and coloured glass and how the use of layers of paint and glazes can give a more sophisticated ‘old master’ feel to the work. Colours used: •Titanium white •Burnt umber •Ultramarine blue •Mars black •Burnt sienna •Raw sienna •Yellow…
The joys of a ‘sta-wet’ palette
Phil gave me a Masterson “Sta-wet” palette for Christmas. I have always just worked on a glass mixing surface I had cut, which I scrape clean with a scraper when the paint is dry. However living in this part of the world where laundry dries before it is even hung on the line I find…
A colour challenge
These three paintings revolve around mastering colour and understanding how the colour wheel works. The technical side of the roofscape drawing leaves much to be desired as the perspective is skwonk, but the colour aspect was the object of this exercise and that was successful…. I suspect some drawing lessons will definitely be required if…
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