Another view from an hotel room - Ischgl in Austria

The Fluckhorn in the background.

Evening in Las Vegas - view from our room at Cesars Palace

Eventually finished this painting, 14 months after the event. 

Surreal - and three days was enough!

Late summer

I was given some inks and pens for my birthday. 

Quick to do with good effects.

Mixed media painting of horses at water trough

A watercolour and gouache painting of horses and foal, queueing up at the watertrough. I hope to do this scene in oil, as the composition and light makes it an interesting picture.

Painting of rural landscape and terrier dog

A winter scene on neighbouring farmland late in the afternoon. I used a photo for the composition, and used the  'Paintbox' app on my iphone to record the tones and values, particularly the greens, blues and orange-brown on site. This worked well, and much better than relying on the colours in the photo.  I studied several of Constable's paintings using the very useful 'zoom' facility on the National Gallery website, to see how he painted the bare trees. No shortcuts unfortunately, just painstaking painting each branch, receding in value towards the ends. The terrier is 'Bess', who made a living trying to torment rabbits, without much success.

Terrier hunting!

Mixed media painting of light beam

This painting started off as a watercolour of a photo I had taken  recently in the early evening. I had over cooked the colour of the foreground and clouds, and the composition was poor, with a large foreground and nothing in  it. I don't like to give up on a painting, so I attempted to rescue it by adding the figure in pastel, general pastel highlights and some detail with fine tipped coloured pens. The photo looks better than the original, but the light is good I think.

                                                     'Light beam' - 2012            
                                                       Mixed media

Painting of Horse eventing Broadway landscape

This was done from a photo of my daughter eventing, with the glorious Vale of Evesham in the distance. I found it very difficult to get the values correct from the photo, especially with so much green in the scene. It makes me more convinced that colour notes or a sketch needs to be done with this type of landscape.

                                                        Eventing, Broadway
                                                          Oil on canvas 2012

Landscape painting with horse

I am finishing several paintings that I started over previous years. This one depicts my young daughter (now 22 years old!) on our mare (long since deceased) in a fictional background. The oil has been re-worked so much, it appears quite flattened, but it's going on this blog anyway.

                                                                  'Late home'
                                                       Oil on canvas board 2012

Painting of Venice landscape

A plein aire watercolour of a famous view in Venice, painted at dawn. Unfortunately, the effect of the sun rising only became apparent once I had finished, so I resorted to use of a white and black gel pens to show the highlights and shadows.
Mixed media 2010

And a classic Venetian scene from our hotel window, with the great range of values and tones

Venetian Canal
Watercolour 2010

Painting of Mauritius beach scenes

My wife treated the both of us to a holiday in Mauritius. In a word - paradise! I attempted to paint a scene every day, and these were the best of the bunch. I used watercolour, and pentel colour brushes, the latter are a great source of concentrated colour. And also black and white gel pens for darks and highlights.

A pontoon is just visible.

Watercolour on paper  2009