Model Standing - Alla Prima

[image moved to my figure study site: 500Nudes.]

Model Standing - Alla Prima
Oil on canvas - 25cm x 36cm

This is from the archives - which in my case is a pile of paintings that have been stacked away in a dark cupboard, mostly of unfinished paintings and paintings that desperately deserve to be shredded... finding this one was a nice little surprise.

The model for this painting was a lovely mother of one in her early thirties, she decided she wanted to try modeling for an artist group - we were very happy that she chose us. She has a lovely figure and a very pleasant manor.

The paint on here is very thin on a canvas roughly primed with gesso, it's the texture in the gesso that you see, not really the brush strokes.

The painting was completed in one two hour session so the size was a perfect fit for the amount of painting time I had available, any bigger and it would have looked incomplete - smaller and it would have looked overworked.

Onion - Oil on canvas board

Onion
Oil on Canvas Board
21cm x 23cm

I can't write the word 'onion' without thinking of my father - when I was a kid there was a silly joke in a kids book; what is an Oz-oz the joke asks... the answer is of course an onion with all it's letters turned sideways - it's all in the font.

I did this little painting as an exercise in simplicity, I wanted efficiency in brush strokes, bold brushwork, perfect colours... I got sidetracked and stuck to my normal little 'licks' of the paint brush... and I liked it!

It's not what I set out to do, but I have to ask myself what I was thinking - the style I set out to mimick is not mine, and it's not in my personality. This last year I've spent trying new things and I've made a lot of mistakes and churned out a lot of crap that I'm not willing to show anyone, while I have works going back a couple of years that I'm very fond of.

It's time to go back to doing what I know.

White Cat - Oil painting

White Cat - painting in progress
Oil on Canvas board

I could not carry on with it, the paint was simply too wet to continue... there is probably about ten minutes work still to be done, but it has to wait a day or two.

I've spent a bit of time ruining a bunch of paintings, nothing seems to be working at the moment, so it's great to have this small win.

Different Strokes from Different Folks

Different Strokes...

This little painting was done in response to Karin Jurick's challenge on her blog: Different Strokes from Different Folks - She puts out a photo as a challenge, artists then respond to the challenge by painting an interpretation of that photo and then posting the painting to her site.

This week we're working from a black and white photo of a landscape somewhere in Pennsylvania, the idea is to fill in colour from your imagination - I've given it a South African feel, since I have no idea what the landscape looks like.

Knysna holiday - Girl on the beach in Natures Valley

Girl on the beach in Natures Valley

We spent a week in March traveling through the Garden Route (Western Cape, South Africa), our base was in Kynsna a beautiful seaside town famous for it's treacherous 'Heads'.

This painting was done from a photo taken in Natures Valley - just short of two hours drive from Knysna. Natures Valley is one of the most beautiful places to live in the world!

The weather was perfect - light breeze and clear sky - but the aerial perspective was thick and close... Aerial perspective is the effect where distant hills are blue'er and less detailed. (More info on aerial perspective.)
I watched as people walk along the beach in what seemed to be perfectly clear weather, but they'd start fading as if they were walking into a thin mist. Details only a few hundred meters away were completely lost. This girl stood pondering something on the beach unaware that she was fading.

This is the first completed painting in a series from that holiday.

The winter rain is setting in now and it's heart warming to be working on paintings filled with bright sun!

Girl Walking

Girl Walking
Oil on Masonite
150mm x 180mm
Click here To Bid

As with many of my paintings, this painting was done in the studio from a photo taken on the streets of Cape Town.
This girl was walking at a brisk pace through the suburbs where I live. I captured this image as she walked past a neighbor's wall with the midday sun filtering through the tree branches.
Capturing the light flitering through those branches was interesting - it's amazing how easy it is to completely mess up something that looks so easy.

Fruit Seller - Smoke break

Fruit Seller - Smoke break
Oil on Masonite
150mm x 180mm
SOLD

This vendor sells his wares about 50m from the Queen of the Street selling seasonal fruit.

Cape Town's CBD is littered by vendors of all sorts, you can buy anything off the street from muti, to food, to radios, TVs and imitation fragrances.

The Rocker

Oil on Stretched Canvas
610mm x 770mm
Click here To Bid

You may recognize this rocker: Brain May (Queen).
My intention was to use the photo (a still from their 1986 concert) as a reference for a generic guitar hero, but then my wife convinced me to just paint it as it is... he would have been playing a Gibson 335 (Chuck Berry type guitar) if I had my way.
What I did want is that feeling of a god like guitarist in the spotlight caught midway through a spine chilling solo - I think I got it.

Did you know that Brain May and his dad made his first electric guitar out of the old coffee table (your useless fact for the day).

Oilcan Guitar

Oil on Stretched Canvas
610mm x 770mm
SOLD

This one was painted almost sarcastically; it's not in my normal style and was done almost completely from imagination. The only time I referenced real life objects was for the tuning pegs on the headstock, the way the fret board and string are lit... and the amp is loosely based on my Marshal amp.

I stood back from the painting and thought, 'Yeah that works' - I was surprised. The painting ended up on exhibition for a few days and was sold as I was unpacking it. During the exhibition this painting got more comments and praise than any other on display. I am still stumped - why is this painting so popular? What makes it more appealing than... well, what makes it so appealing?

It hung on my wall for three months before the buyer cam to pick it up, now it's gone and I miss it!

On the easel at the moment...

Girl Walking

Street Vendor

I've not been working very hard the last two weeks - I could blame it on computer problems; which is true, but an oil paint artist can't really use 'PC problems' as an excuse... but that's where all my reference photos, notes, planing, etc. live...

These are the two paintings I'm slowly working on at the moment, both are only 30min away from finished, and have been for the last week or so. The photos show the progression of the paintings - I'll probably delete this post once the finished paintings are posted.