Blog

All at sea is basically about how I was feeling when painting this image. I couldn't quite get my palette right, and I was putting things down on the paper which didn't make sense. 

In this blog I will take you through step by step how I created the painting New Lands II. I explore the use of pigment sticks and solvents to create a base layer and then build up the painting using a brayer. See how I apply white paint with a brayer to create some lovely muted colours and how I use the brayer for blending along with palette knives and fan brushes.

There are all sorts of things that influence me when I'm choosing the colours I am going to work with. The influence behind this painting was the planning for one of my workshops where I was wanting to use some contrasting / warm / cold colours for people to experiment with. I was drawn to a number of already mixed greys which is quite unusual for me as I do tend to want to mix my own greys generally but these lilac / blue / greys in this painting really got my attention and have worked so well with the Senellier Chinese Orange.

This piece was created recently whilst I was out in Ireland. It started off as a bit of a disaster as the place where I was staying had this gorgeous view out to sea but by mid afternoon the sun would be shining in so much that it was blinding me and making my cold wax go all a bit weird.

So I am working on a new collection of work as I have a very busy schedule ahead of me this year and this painting just came out of my head the other day and I am really in love with it.  The palette is very different to what I've used before but I think this image has come about from a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the Norman Ackroyd prints.

My time for painting is very limited so when I do get a couple of days completely free I like to scale up and let loose on a large pieces of Arches paper.

I'm not really sure where the inspiration for this painting came from other than the dark autumnal colours; it isn't a scene that I recognise. Sometimes a painting just comes about because of the colours that I want to use and I was really wanting to create a large scale imposing clouds scene.