Mini Pumpkins

Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 cm each

It's that time of year. Pumpkins and squashes are in the shops; some will get carved, some will get eaten, some will get painted... and its possible that some will get all three. These two mini pumpkins have managed one so far.

Reading Abbey

Reading Abbey has been closed to the public for several years now; I understand that there is a risk of faling masonry. It seemed pretty solid the last time I was there... at the time, I was playing with my new SLR (a second hand Pentax K1000) and took a series of black and white photographs in which, to be frank, the masonry and the autumn eaves were pretty much indistinguishable. So the photographs scarcely represent a solid ruin! Fortunately, I had another camera loaded with colour film, and those photographs helped me to interpret the monochrome ones.

This is line and wash, with sepia acrylic ink (and a cheeky splodge or two of white acrylic ink) applied with pen and dropper, on A4 HP Bockingford paper.

The Beeches - SOLD

With your back to Watership Down, you are looking down the line of The Beeches and the footpath to Ladle Hill (the footpath is part of the Wayfarer's Walk, a long distance path). You can see the sloping side of Ladle Hill through the trees to the right.

I took a few liberties with fences (largely removal thereof) and I also took a tree out to improve the view.

Oil on canvas 33 x 55cm
SOLD

EDIT (20 December 2013): High quality "giclée" prints will be available of this painting in the new year.

Wollaton Gulls

Wollaton Park in Nottingham has a lake. The lake was well lit and well stocked with seagulls the last time I was there, in November. It made a pleasing image, almost an abstract one.

Can you spot the duck?

Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm
19 January 2013

November Trees

There are a lot of heavily wooded areas near where I work. One sunny lunch hour last November, I took my camera for a walk in the woods; this is based on the photographs I took that day.

It's painted on another clear-gessoed linen canvas; the natural linen peeps through here and there, and the edges are deliberately unfinished.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm
For sale

Wollaton Hall: Gothic Mansion (AKA Wollaton Gothic)

Wollaton Hall, an Elizabethan country house, is in Nottingham. Well, it's in Wollaton, which is in what you might call Greater Nottingham. The house - set in a fabulously large park - has been in the hands of Nottingham City Council (formerly Nottingham Corporation) since 1925, and is a rather splendid museum.

Green to Orange Pumpkin (3)

Something tells me that this pumpkin will soon have finished its colour journey. The step between numbers 1 and 2 is quite drastic when you look at all three paintings together:

You can tell that I missed a week.

Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm

SOLD

Green to Orange Pumpkin (2)

Here is the second painting of my ripening pumpkin. As you can see, this one missed Hallowe'en. It will probably end up as soup.

Edited 03/11/11: The second picture - added today - is, of course, the same painting (albeit photographed under different lighting conditions), but I took advantage of the fact that oils take so long to dry to "edit" the painted highlights. Originally, they were smears of white paint. They bothered me; they were too white. It looked like I'd dropped flour on the pumpkin, or applied my paint direct to the gourd. So I smudged them. My finger got covered in paint, but I think the result is an improvement.

Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm.
SOLD

Sweet Chestnuts

Family day out in a local country park; delight at spotting the spiny cases of sweet chestnuts, followed by the greater delight of gathering a few handfuls of the nuts for subsequent painting roasting.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 x 7 cm.

Green to Orange Pumpkin (1)

I daresay I should have done a couple more Lego minifigures today, but I've been meaning to have a go at this pumpkin, before it turns all orange, for a while. My idea is to do a series of these 20cm square canvases portraying the same gourd as it gradually turns from green to orange. I thought I'd make it difficult for myself (and less pungent for the rest of the family) by eschewing brushes (and thinners - it's the turpentine that's smelly). Instead, I used a palette knife, which was a bit of a challenge considering the size of the canvas. I had to forgo the idea of faithfully recording the pattern of orange on green in favour of an impression.

Oh, yes, do you recognise the tiles? I dug them out again to provide a bit of continuity between this and the older squashes

Oil on canvas, 20 x 20 cm
SOLD

Squashes

Here are a couple of seasonally appropriate little oil paintings that I did a few years ago.

“Small Pumpkin and Little Gem Squash”, 25 October 2002.

7 x 5”, oil on canvas, painted with a brush in the studio.

“Butternut”, 29 October 2002
7 x 5”, oil on canvas, painted with a brush in the studio.