Abstract 1

10th June 2014

Unlike my other canvases this only took about an hour to paint. I just wanted a bit of fun with colour after spending months just on one painting. I painted a rough tile affect using a mixed dull green jade colour, cadmium orange, ultramarine blue, and primary magenta II. I then used to brush to bleed in the colours. Afterwards, I scraped pastel turquoise, red, and orange onto the canvas, sealing it afterwards with a sealant. Not sure if it will stay that way but it looks quite effective against my dark blue walls.

Earth Spiral

'EARTHSPIRAL'

This is the last painting in a series of three. Similar to the others, this painting was inspired by the photographs available on the Nasa website. This particular painting was from the photograph and article named 'A 'Rose' Made of Galaxies'. I originally used coloured pastels to produce the affects which were very subtle, and although this did look affective and more accurate as a whole, it seemed rather bland from a distance, so like the other 2 paintings, I decided to use a mixture of pastels and thickly applied paint to make it really stand out. The hues are deeper than the original photograph for affect. I again used unconventional tools to apply the paint like needles, pins, and a cotton pick. The wispy original pastels are made to stand out by just slightly outlining the areas with a white pencil. The painting was finally blacked in, but extensively used to delineate the different areas for affect and contrast.

Saturnine

'SATURNINE'

The different features of Saturn from the Cassini Nasa project photographs inspired this stylised representation. At the north pole for example there is an amazing phenomenon of a hexagonal storm. There is also a storm in the northern sector along with the well known 'eye' storm in the southern sector. The chevrons are also represented along with the colour banding. The actual colours of Saturn are far more subtle of course, but for effect, vibrant contrasting colours were used here along with various pastels in places to mirror the blending of colours on Saturn itself. Different techniques and implements were used due to the detailed nature of the painting and also to produce the thick layering. Paint was dripped and placed onto the surface with heavily loaded but fine paintbrushes, and also sewing needles and pins.

Moon Man 1

'MOONMAN'

This is the first in a set of three paintings entitled 'Moonman', 'Saturnine', and 'Earthspiral'. It was painted in a stylised fashion from various photographs available from the Nasa website and website photographs in general. It details actual geographical features like the craters that give the impression of a face. The rings around the moon are visible phenomenon at times, however the strip and peal-like beams of light are more stylised, but loosely based on how light is actually constructed or seen; the beads representing particles and the lines representative of lines sometimes seen by the eye on video when there is a sun flare. To produce the geographical features, thick paint of different colours was dripped and swirled with a cotton pick or scraped with it. The shining affect was achieved by drawing silver circles around the moon then using a dry bristle brush to drag the wet gel outwards; I also drew white pastels lines, and used my fingers to fade these outwards. The painting was then blacked in again to emphasise the dark and light.

Moon Man 2

A friend asked me to make a copy of the original 'Moon Man'. I applied much thicker layers on this painting. It matches some of the moon's overall features in a better way than the first painting.

Flutterby

pencil drawing

first stage; wings close up

wings

Almost finished!

This is almost finished. Again, it's all layered. The yellow wing sections took many months to achieve. I used a mixture of a mixed yellow colour and layers of a copper and silver medium. I stumbled across a jade green when I was supposedly mixing a brown for the under sections of the bark background. Once I'd mixed and applied the outer lighter layer, I scraped it to give a bark-like texture showing the jade beneath. 

Star

I did this rather quickly recently, but I'm not as yet happy with it; a bit sloppy! The way I photographed it didn't do it many favours either lol! Will update it as and when I clean it up...

Medieval Panel

I decided to paint a picture for myself. I noticed this medieval style wooden screen on a drama and fell in love with the shade of orange with the brown against it. I copied the colours but it was basically my own design. It took weeks of layering with different shades of brown, then I textured the orange background. It was a PAINting, as in it was very painful to achieve this!

The Stars (Solar)

                                                                             'The Stars (Solar)

This was the first painting I did for my daughter. I continued to apply the layering technique with acrylic in further paintings; I also used gel pens and pastels. As with the others, I worked from nasa photographs of the sun to find particular details, but then did the rest as a stylised painting. I tend to make my paintings too busy, so I had to black out certain areas to highlight others!