Saucy

I have been painting away the last couple of weeks on the latest commission, i felt this painting has taken me some time and some elements of the painting moved along at snails pace, i think the reason for the length of time taken was due to the fact that there was two sauce bottles in the image and that obviously meant two labels, and that means ALOT of work as i had to contend with the lettering (something I always find difficult) and the dreaded houses of Parliament on the HP bottle.

I also needed to make sure the distance, height and width of the bottles was correct and that the lines were as straight as possible, this lead me to one of the best purchases i have made to aid my art.....frog tape

 A new tape on the market that stops paint bleed something you often get with normal masking tape, i used the tape to ensure the lines were as straight as possible as my hand sketches do not leave me with very straight lines and this also helped me relax a little as i didn't need to pain stakingly make sure the paint was straight

As you can see  here is the painting with the frog tape aiding my lines

I also did something very different with this piece, being self taught ive always used photo references, but felt i needed to push my self and try and capture a more realistic approach in terms of colour so i worked with a life set up alongside the photo references I found this refreshing and gave me a better ability to "Check" colours.

"Saucy"

36" x 25"

Oil on wooden panel

SOLD

I also ran an Easter competition on my Facebook page to get the kids involved in art.  The idea was simple, the kids painted a plain egg and the most votes/likes on that image would win my 2nd ever attempt at oil painting!! there was a great response and some really great work.

I had 13 children enter the competition and they were all great, some comical some abstract, some clever

and so the competition started and votes came in thick and fast and there was a definite lead straight away

    and then the Easter deadline came for votes and there was one clear winner Aimee Smith  with

egg titled "hide and seek"

The winning egg with an incredible 98 votes :-)

on another note i had the great honour of having my own portrait painted by the amazing BP portrait exhibitor and winner of the BP travel award  Paul Bee,l i found out he was doing an art project where he used the medium of Skype to paint as many life paintings as he could from people all over the world, he spends a maximum of 30 minutes on these pieces and has so far created many portraits, we spoke about him painting me but I was busy painting at the time so he painted me whilst i was creating my commission "saucy"

Paul Beel and the portrait of me.