Holyhead
New Painting: Early Morning, Holyhead Breakwater Country Park
This is a painting of the lake and chimney at Holyhead Breakwater Country Park. It’s based on an early morning plein air study from a couple of years ago (which can be seen below for comparison) and is painted in thick impasto with a palette knife. Once again, I’m using flat planes/blocks of colour as …
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New Painting: Holyhead Breakwater Country Park I
This is my latest painting which is of Holyhead Breakwater Country Park. It’s based on a plein air study from a year or two ago (see below). It continues my attempts to strike a balance between figuration and abstraction using flat blocks of colour to represent the planes of the forms/scene. This is my third …
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Live Portrait Demo
This is the result of a live portrait demo/work in progress from my Open Studio. Not in a rush and feeling brave? Come along to my studio, grab a cup of coffee and a chair and I’ll have a go at drawing you, too! Download the free guide for directions to my studio and to …
New Painting: A Bigger Station (Holyhead)
This painting of Holyhead Station was completed in response to further reading of David Hockney’s various musings, specifically in Hockney on Art: Conversations with Paul Joyce, and A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney by Martin Gayford, on the need to resist the ‘tyranny of the lens’ in painting. Shamefully, I missed Hockney’s 2012 exhibition at the …
New Paintings: Southstack Landscapes
The following two paintings were completed in fairly quick succession, again in a grisaille style. The first was painted from a very loose sketch carried out in a very fine drizzle, which soaked my sketchbook and obscured my view. The ‘fingers’ of rock reminded me of a giant’s hand as he was attempting to claw …
New Paintings: Self-Portraits
I’ve painted a few self-portraits over the past couple of years, despite the fact that my family always mock me for portraying myself with a double-chin. I think the most commonly used phrase is ‘Dad, you look like a frog…’ but to my way of thinking, I’m just trying to earn myself the right to …