Neal's Yard

I'm sure it wasn't quite that wonky when I took the original photographs... nor when I applied paint to canvas. I'm blaming the slightly off angle between the camera and the painting when I took the photograph of the painting of the photograph.

New Forest Heather 3: Path (7x7)

This is painted from a photograph taken last Wednesday on the same trip that supplied me with the source image for "New Forest Heather 1: From the stream bed".

The original image is decidedly more rectangular, but I seem to have run out of suitably sized canvases with the right proportions for the big portrait version in oils that I was planning. This is a sketch to see if the image works as a square.

You may have noticed that "New Forest Heather 2" is missing from the blog. Well, it exists; I made two versions of this image yesterday evening. You'll find it on DeviantART...

Manual Colour Correction

You may recall that I've been troubled by the lighting when taking photographs of my paintings. Well, after a few words of advice from another artist and a bit of fiddling with the non-automatic colour correction functions in my bitmap editor (I use Corel Photobook, but she uses the freeware GIMP), I think I may have cracked it.

Darwin's Houses

Yesterday I had occasion to visit Kent with picture-making in mind. I took some photographs for potential townscapes in Bromley, then I visited the village of Downe - which has a beautiful church - before winding up at Downe House, just outside the village. Downe House's chief importance is that it was the home of Charles Darwin, an intriguing and inspiring figure in the history of science.

Iron Age Round House Roofs at Butser

There is a place in East Hampshire where a group of experimental archaeologists have buit an iron age farm. It is called Butser, and it's an excellent day out. As a bonus, there is a very pretty hill behind the site, and when we went, the willowherb was in bloom. (So was the marshmallow, but I have double checked the photographs, and this was willowherb).

Painted from photographs.

Oil on canvas, 50 x 40 cm
For sale

See also "Manual Colour Correction"

New Forest Heather 1: From the stream bed

One of this summer's most far-flung day trips was to the south of the county; we were planning to visit a specific historical attraction, but it turned out that it was closed on Wednesdays. So was the next random attraction that we found via the increasingly popular pastime of "brown-signing". Refusing to believe that Hampshire was closed on Wednesdays, we continued on to the New Forest. Which was, naturally, open.

Lego 46 in progress

I tried a little experiment with this little fellow.

Lego Minifigures 46: Olympic Archer

Painted by request, here is the Lego Olympic Archer, Team GB flavour. (I'm wondering, now, whether the same sports were represented in the other national sets that the enterprising Danes are bound to have produced.)

He's quite a dashing figure, with the curl in his fringe...

Painted with a 3/8" brush - see the in-progress.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm
Spoken for.

Lego Minifigure: Olympic Equestrienne

I'm hardly the most avid sports fan, but the concept of the Olympics is rather wonderful, and - seeing as how Lego have taken the trouble to make some special editions, and that my children have acquired a few of them - I wanted to paint one of them. Chosen pretty much at random, here is the equestrienne. I wonder if she's meant to be a specific rider. Does she look like any of our medal winners in the equestrian events?

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm
For sale

From the Herra

This is a view from the beach on a small promontory of land called "The Herra", looking out to the mouth of the Helford (and so out to sea).  The Herra - owned by the National Trust, as is so much of Cornwall's coastline - is in Gillan Creek, which is a tributary of the Helford River in Cornwall.

Oops.

I have just discovered that my Gallery page link had broken. I've fixed it now.
Some recent paintings:

Hotel do Golf: In Progress

Because I worked on "Hotel do Golf" during the evenings, there are several in-progress shots. For those of you who are interested, here they are:

Hotel do Golf, Vidago, Portugal - SOLD

This is a work from a photograph and from a faulty memory. I took the photograph on monochrome 35mm film in the spring of 2003. Memory - aided by suggestions in the black and white image, and supplemented by imagination - supplied the colours.