On Monday evening I was invited to do a demonstration at Alloa Art Club. This was the painting I did by firstly blocking in colours in pastels without drawing in the subject matter. Once I had an underpainting I used charcoal to draw this still life. I added more pastel once I had drawn in the main objects in the still life. The club members spent the second half of the evening engaged in doing their own still life paintings.
This is a painting of a view I love where we live. It is a short walk from the house. The light is always changing which adds to a certain sense of drama. This is a good spot to do sketching and painting weather permitting!
This little character was so cute I couldn’t resist getting my pastels out to do a painting.
I was at a Ploughing match in Dunino Fife and these two beautiful horses stole the show for me. I did a sketch to capture the gesture of the pose and the tonal value of the painting. I then got out my pastels and had fun. The day was quite damp and misty however that made for an interesting setting for the painting.
This pastel painting was started with a watercolour undercoat in strong complimentary colours. I love the various shadows you see in sand dunes at different times of the day.
I have just finished this studio painting. This was inspired from sketches I did in Pittenweem on a really sunny and windy day. I chose this compostition from the previous oil studies I posted.
I set up this still life in the studio. I used a box on its side with a window cut out to allow the light to filter through on that side. This gave an interesting play of light on my subject. The paper I worked on was a pale yellow Sennelier pastel card. This has a nice rough texture to grab the pastel. The middle picture shows the still life in progress.
The first image is my study of the Wave. I started the painting using a discarded piece of cardboard. I prepared it with a layer of gesso, this enables the pastel to adhere to the surface. My idea was to be less precious about the painting. I enjoyed it so much that the painting started to work out. I then went in search of more archival quality support and progressed onto the much larger second painting.
I am still thinking of Summer despite the zero degrees last night, it is warm in the studio. I stumbled across this lovely display of wild flowers just outside Balmullo, Fife. They have been in my mind since then and it is good to get my feeling of the scene on paper.
I enjoy doing paintings of people concentrating on their craft. Chefs are great subjects for this. The Chef was cooking at a market stall in Dundee city centre. This was one very large paella pan!