Self Portrait in Fading Light

-
 


Self Portrait in Fading Light
Oil on gessoed Arches paper
200x165mm


Oil paint on paper has a special quality about it that I find quite sensuous. I worked with the paint very thin and used my fingers and a rag to blend the colour and reveal the texture of the paper.  I wanted to try and capture the mysterious quality of the fading light and wasn't too concerned about getting proportions correct.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dale Copeland

-
Image
Dale Copeland oil on aluminium 100x100mm This is my partner Dale. She is an assemblage artist, website writer, mathematician, teacher and a long time friend, and mother to our daughter, Toby. She doesn't approve of social media sites. Despite this, she gets far more likes and attention than I could ever hope for. When she learned I was painting my Facebook friends she immediately changed her profile picture to this one. I was tempted to paint the old one, but I'm happy with the way this one came out.
Read more

A Still Life Monoprint

-
Image
I wanted to try a monoprint using the slow dryng Open Acrylics. I used a rectangle of white perspex as my plate. Being white this made it easier to see what I was doing.  I spent quite a while working on the plate, probably as long as I would on a regular painting. Regular acrylics would not allow you to do this as they dry too quickly. Here is the image I pulled off it, printing on a small ethching press. The image is of course reversed.  I wasn't too happy with it really. I thought it looked better o the perspex plate!  However, regarding it as a learning process I perservered. There is usually a ghost of the image left on the plate after printing, so I reworked the image more loosely this time and produced the two further prints below. They are a bit more lively, but I still wasn't happy with them. I was wiping the plate clean when I thought I'd give it one more chance.  I like this one the best of the lot. 
Read more

Anne Sat in a Chair - 1st Sitting

-
Image
I have made an initial start on the large portrait of Anne Sitting.  As is usual when painting, your present work will spawn new ideas for further work and exploration.  While I was painting Anne's portrait last year, I realised that a more complete picture with her sitting in the chair would be a truer and more compelling portrait.  She habitually wears many layers of dark clothes and has these lurid orange plastic shoes. The shoes became a problem for me on the last portrait as they kept distracting my eye, and I asked her to wear different ones.  It became something of a joke between us, and we both agreed that for this painting she sh ould wear them. I began our first sitting by making a few preliminary drawings.  Drawing is always a good way to get to know a subject.  It doesn't matter that they are rough or crude; they are not intended to be finished artworks.  They are working drawings and you start to get a feel for where potential p...
Read more