Pick and Mix Still Life
Five little alla prima paintings from my Easter holiday. I did others too, but they were all culled. Each painting has a very slightly different surface – some gesso, some linen, some slippy, some absorbent, and so on. This meant…
Pig!
I’d been thinking of a still life painting incorporating something as brutally corporeal as this pig’s head for some time. My local butcher kindly put this aside for me and I painted it largely Alla Prima in one session, with…
Lavender in the old glass bottle
Here is a very quick painting where I again considered a white backdrop and the different atmosphere that this provides. I wanted to make a feature of the shadow as a part of the composition, while keeping things generally quite…
Pewter and Satsuma
This alla prima painting is quite broad in terms of its brushstrokes, with occasional impasto work on the surface. The pewter goblet is such a definite shape, I decided to place it against a pale backdrop with a white tablecloth…
Pomegranate and The Parian Jug
A one shot alla prima painting of a Parian ware jug with a pomegranate. I thought the jug, with its relief patterning and figures, would be the difficult object to capture…. but no, it was the pomegranate.
Peonies, going over
Having spent far too long at the computer today, I didn’t have very much motivation to start painting this afternoon. Once I got going however, I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to suggest in paint the forms of these…
Mug and Boots
A preparatory oil sketch for a larger still life commission (a photo of which I will post soon). I love the spontaneity of this painting, and enjoy its expressiveness of brushwork.
The Glass Jug
While I was making bread today, I set myself the challenge of painting this unusual glass jug in the time it took to prove the dough and cook it. It’s more of an experiment in texture and reflection than a…
Trying to keep it simple
This is the third painting I made of this set-up (the other two were write-offs and wiped away). Each time I over-thought and over-worked things. While you can see how thin some of the paint is in this final version,…
Little China Dog
A little 6″ x 8″ oil sketch of a china dog figurine that I recently bought at a vintage fair. I’m not especially attracted to kitschy dust attractors as a rule… but this little dog just spoke to me (!)….
