Raiding the cellar..

I was down in North Berwick yesterday, picking up some paintings from a gallery someone had shown an interest in buying, and looking for various bits and bobs in my parent's cellar there. I came across a wee pile of watercolours, mostly from 2002, and thought I'd put them up here just to show how much my style has changed over the years. I painted almost exclusively in watercolour back then, and most of my work was commission based one way or another.

Edinburgh castle

I used to be asked to paint Edinburgh castle all the time – I ended up trying to find a lot of different angles to paint it from so I didn’t get bored with it!

Ann street

This is an old piece from when I was mainly doing watercolour house portraits to commission. This was my ‘sample’ painting, of the centre building in Ann street, one of the finest streets in Edinburgh’s new town. I actually used to have a similar painting on my business card, but unfortunately a lot of people thought I was an artist called Ann Street.

St Bernards well

A gallery who'd bought a few of my pieces asked for some Stockbridge pieces. Unfortunately they didn't think many people would recognise this one, which still surprises me ( maybe they just didn't like it :p). It's a lovely old folly that sits on the water of Leith.

Fidra

This was a commission from a couple who lived near Fidra, an island of the East coast of Scotland. I wasn’t quite happy with it at the time, so I ended up doing another for them. I seem to do that a lot! Maybe I should make myself just do ONE painting per commission..


Anyway, there ends my trip down memory lane. I'm thinking of putting some of these older works up for auction on Ebay, with 30% of the proceeds going towards charity. I'd be interested to know if anyone thought that's a good idea?

Works in progress : Morar Bay

I thought I'd do a slightly longer post on a work in progress today, showing you a bit of my studio, and the tools of the trade.

First off comes the base image - I generally print two or three versions of whatever photo I am going to work from, with different lighting so I can both get some sky drama and pick out the details .



Then studio set up - the joys of being a very skint artist means a studio in the living room. Thankfully my fiance is very patient if I'm not done by the time he gets back from work...

One good thing about it is I get to watch TV while I paint ( or rather listen).

Once the painting is at a stage as shown above, I'll often take a pic and fiddle with it on the computer to work out colours, contrasts, what it's going to be like if I put all the landscape elements in. It helps rather a lot when I'm a bit stuck.



I can tell now I want the blues to be a lot more intense, the boat to be far to the right ( not where shown above) and that yellow taken down to a slightly less mustardy colour.

So back to painting. Half way through is always the bit I like least - I know where I want to get to, but I don't always know how I'm going to do it . I probably shouldn't admit that! I'll update with a finished version later, if it goes where I want it to go..




Edit to add - the final version :

Works in progress - Arisaig

I took a break from the Valle D'or series yesterday to start work on some more highland paintings, inspired by a trip out to the car where I noticed a big canvas that had been left in the boot..
I took some stunning sunset pics when I was up at Arisaig in June, but hadn't done much with them yet as it's too my mind quite tricky to turn a sunset photo into a sunset picture without it looking rather tacky. But I felt emboldened yesterday and decided to give it a shot anyway. I'm a bout three quarters of the way through this painting, and I'm at this horrible stage where I can see all the bits that need work, but I don't want to start on them in case I ruin what I've done. Because I like it! Grr. Wish me luck..

Finally, there's still two days left in the Redbubble Sale : one calender like the one below sold this morning, plenty more available..


Calenders here, Prints and cards here.

Sea Sale! 3 days only..

First off, there's a sale on at red bubble of all my works that are linked to the sea. 15% off all prints, cards, posters.. Just hit the link and go to the sale gallery.

Calenders are also reduced by 15% - Check them out here.

The sale only lasts three days though so don't wait around..


And a quick update on what I have been up to painting wise..

I finished my Ardtoe Beach series with this painting here :

Also in the sale.

I painted it up fairly quickly, and thought, 'hey, I'll finish it off after I come back from my weekend away. Upon my return though, I realised there wasn't any more to do really. This made me happy :)


I've also been working on my Valle D'or series again - I'm up to 11 paintings now. Almost enough for a calender :p. Very pleased with how some of the new paintings have been coming along - not sure if this will be too small to see, but will give you the gist.

Hmm. Weirdly unfixably blurry! but if you click on it, it takes you to a full version that is fine.

West Highland paintings

Broke my long spell of not-very -much -painting at all with a couple of paintings inspired by our holiday in the highlands last week. It's always difficult to pick up a brush again after a long time away, so I was quite pleased with how they turned out. Some paintings are better in photos than they are in the flesh, with these it's the other way round, but here they are anyway.



Both are acrylic on Box canvas, 16" x 12". The originals are for sale at £120 each, or £200 for both. As always, cards and prints can be bought at Redbubble via the link on the side.

Just a quick heads up that 2010 calenders are now available on RedBubble, with a shiny 15% discount for the next two days.

Check out my various calenders here. There's a lot of great calenders by other people too on Redbubble, so if mine don't tickle your fancy, have a look around the site anyway, you may find something that does.

RECENT WORK

Hallo, poor little neglected blog..

I've not been regularly painting, and no regular paintings means not much to write about. But I do have a few things to show.

First up, my partner and I took a wee trip to the highlands and I produced a couple of en plein air little canvases -

Sanna Beach

Back of Keppoch

These, and the hundreds of photos I took, will be used as the basis to work up some bigger canvases. Hopefully I'll be back up there later in the year to work as well - the west coast of Scotland does just make me want to paint, paint paint.

Secondly, a commission to paint the local bistro out here in France. The proprieter is leaving, and my mum wanted to give her a leaving present. Hopefully it will remind her of good times there - We certainly had many great evenings at Le Lion D'or.

Finally - some good news in that a couple of sets of paintings have sold - Belhaven Bay and East Beach tryptichs were sold through Blues and Greens gallery in North Berwick recently.

And that's the news for now..hopefully there will be more to show again soon.