Old Hedgerow

Pushing oil paint around on homemade canvas boards.

 

 

 I ought to have stopped at this stage!

George.

Happy 90th George. 

George.

Small Encaustic.

First for a While.

I haven't posted for a while, and it's about time I did. So, as I sit here waiting for Sara to pick me up, I thought I'd put this recent encaustic piece on the blog. I like the idea of nuance and suggestion. I like having one foot in a semi abstract camp, and the  other in a more representational one.

Badly phrased, but it's 16.42 on a Friday evening, and I want to go home.

Right. She's here, and I'm off.

Charcoal, Oil and Wax

The Sum Of Its Parts

I am currently planning a largish encaustic painting of an old man. The idea is to paint the features on separate canvases and glue them onto a larger board, before working wax into the whole this. This is it so far.

 With wax applied.

The Philosopher.

Land Study

Another small painting from the summer.

One From The Holiday

This is a stretch of path from one of my regular dog walks this summer. I started with a grisaille and built it up from there.

Probably should have stopped here.

...or here.

Figures

Head Study

Wax

(more) Changes

This is a painting on top of a painting, on top of a painting, on top...(http://richardspainting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/changes.html, July 17th post). I'll probably stop here and 'retire' this canvas.

A Return To Oil - A Return To Landscape.

I don't draw out my paintings first because I find it tends to be restrictive, leading to them looking wooden. Anyway, I wanted to push paint around again, which encaustic doesn't really let you do. I love encaustic, but it's more about the results than enjoying the process. By comparison, to me anyway, painting in oils feels like an indulgence - I love the physical act of moving the paint around.

Encaustic Head Study

Untitled

Encaustic

Allotments

 This was the first time painting outside for a year. I really like the allotments and have been thinking about painting them for a while. I chose this scene because of the reflections and transparencies in the glass. I also thought it would be tricky to do. I got rained off at one stage, had to take shelter in the car, and in the end I had to pack away in a hurry before the heavens opened. All things considered I was reasonably pleased with the results.

Allotments

Oil on canvas

Going out Sketching...

 ...and then working them into paintings.
I decided that whilst the weather holds, I would take my sketchbook out into a field a few hundred metres from our house to do some drawing. I've been looking at Joan Eardley's work online, so I fancied having a go at some overgrown hedgerows and fields. My thinking was that these might lend themselves to the sort of very bold and painterly mark making, in the way that she worked. The short walk was quite productive, I completed several sketches, which has led to two paintings so far.

 I left it for a day at this stage, then decided that it need more of a focal point(s)...so I added a figure in the middle ground, cow parsley in the foreground, brightened the sky a little, and added highlights to the vegetation.

Millfield

encaustic on board

6 Degrees Of Separation.

The images below are worked up from some of my York photographs (of people) - again in charcoal, pastel, emulsion, but this time also with encaustic wax added. The first, started well enough, but turned into a disaster, and has since been destroyed (it bubbled and peeled off it's backing, so has been painted over). As I was doing this drawing Sara came into the studio and told me that the figure looks just like a friend of hers from Millthorpe. I showed her the photograph I was working from (on my phone - we have banned the students from doing this at school!), and she laughed, saying that it is her friend. Completely unknown to me. 

This is now the second time that I have photographed a stranger in the street, only to find a connection with them later. The previous one was when I photographed a woman walking towards me, oblivious, only to meet her as a colleague several years later, and recognised her from my photo.

  The drawing that Sara recognised.

 Charcoal

Apparently this one looks more like Jude Law.

 Pastel

Emulsion.

Wax

Untitled

Millfield

Done from a combination of sketches and photographs.

High Summer

Encaustic

Untitled Stranger (the lady outside the bank).

 Playing with the charcoal yesterday got me thinking about painting people again. Sara, Seth and Lenni were planning to go into York, so I tagged along. No shopping for me. I planned to photograph people and have a look for the peregrine falcons that reside on the minster. My first stop when we got there was the minster. As soon as I lifted the binoculars to my eyes, there was a female on the north tower; exactly where @yorkperegrines (twitter) reported her an hour or two earlier. Fantastic. I haven't seen many peregrines; I saw one as it flew over my head as I was kayaking a couple of years ago, a pair that live on Lincoln cathedral, and magically, three, that Sara spotted, circling above our house last year. They were ushered away, towards York in fact, by a buzzard. Anyway, I watched her preen for a while, then I went off to photograph people.
This painting is a mixture of charcoal, pastel and emulsion paint. It's on a piece of lining (wall)paper glued to a board. I completed the charcoal part sat in the garden, then moved into the studio to add the pastels and paint.
I decided to extend the hair out of the picture, because I liked the design. It reminded me of some of David Bailey's sixties portrait photos. All simple black and white shapes, with interesting cropping and negative spaces. However, as the painting progressed, it looked a little too much like a 'beehive' hairdo, so after a day or too I cracked the emulsion back out and reworked the hair.

 

 The extended hair worked well in charcoal...

 ...but not so well as the pastels were added.

 

Untitled.

Charcoal and Emulsion

Messing about with an old tin of emulsion paint and some charcoal.