WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO

With each new Blog post I always tell myself that I should do them more frequently than I do, but I have kind of given myself a break about it recently.  Of course I could create a blog post each time a new piece is created or when anything remotely interesting happens to me, but I kind of like waiting a couple of months between Blogs so that they have more meat to them, yeah sure they take me longer to write but I think I'd much rather be sat down in the right frame of mind with the right kind of  focus and create better content for you guys to read than bang out a blog every week or so.

Anyway, I'm rambling....

Since the last Blog I have created four new pieces and I'm currently working on another.
The first piece since the portrait I created of my father, is another toy inspired piece and one of my largest pieces to date, My father quite a few years ago gave me an old wind up toy aeroplane, I think with the intention to paint, but at the time I didn't really think of anything I could use It for so put it away for safe keeping. It was only when I was sorting through a few things that I stumbled across this wonderful little toy, obviously now I was creating a few pieces with toys and so this sparked a few ideas.

I knew I didn't want to paint the plane just on it's own and had a few Ideas, but one that kept coming around again and again was a composition that included a pilot, I started to search the web to find the right kind of toy but had no real idea what I would find, until I stumbled across the most perfect toy pilot I could have ever wished for, the colours were a perfect match for the plane, the little details on his uniform etc were exactly what I was looking for, and so a purchase was made.

A Couple of days later he arrived and I set about creating some compositions until I settled on one, this composition was simple yet striking and as I knew what the title would be It would be a nod to the British dry sense of humour.....the title...."Is this a wind up"

I felt this worked as I created the pilot with a very unimpressed expression as if to say "You don't expect me to fly this...do you" whilst at the same time having the more obvious fact that it was indeed a wind up plane.

 

"Is this a Wind Up"

48" x 36"

Oil on Panel

 

SOLD

 

 

The next piece that came out of the Studio was again based on an old Vintage wind up tin toy I had purchased for my self, It was a small boxing ring with two fighters in the centre and when you wind the toy up the fighters moved backwards and forwards allowing there one riveted arm to move freely and look like they were indeed throwing punches. Again I didn't want to just paint it exactly how it was and so I thought it would be a nice to give the piece a little change so I could show a mark of respect for one of my favourite films growing up, What film??.......Rocky

 

The way I was going to do this was to change the shorts of the two tin fighters to the short designs that both  Rocky and Apollo wore in the first film, only a true fan would notice this small change but for those of you that are not familiar here is a screen shot from the film Rocky

 

 

Film Still of the film Rocky.

 

Now I started painting this piece and to be honest I really struggled for some reason, I found the characters looked too cartoony and kept working on them to make them look more realistic, but then they wouldn't look like the tin material they were made of and this went on back and fourth until finally I decided to stop messing around and paint exactly what I saw  

 

 

The actual Tin toy I was attempting to paint with my painting in the background

 

I worked at it more and more and I feel it actually came out really well and looked like the material I was trying to render with paint

 

 

"Slugger Champions"

30" x 30"

Oil on Panel

 

AVAILABLE

 

The next piece came as a commission, the client was a chief fire officer and had liked some of my toy pieces and asked if I would paint him a little Lego fire fighter character putting out a tea light, his only request was that I painted the character with a white chief's hat.

 

I set about creating this piece for him and loved every minute of it, the particular challenge for me whilst creating this piece was painting the smoke drifting away from the candle wick, but I was really pleased with how I rendered this and felt it came out better than I was anticipating

 

 

"FIRE" - Commission

30" x 18"

Oil on panel

 

SOLD

 

 

Hanging in the clients home

 

 

At this point I was craving something with reflections and glass, for those that have followed my work this is as you all know something I love to paint.

 

And so this piece was created

 

"The Gambling Game"

21" x 21"

Oil on panel

 

SOLD

 

 

I also had a print made of one of my paintings from my show last year and had it framed to hang in my kitchen and finally got around to hanging it on the wall....and I love it!!

 

 

Marmite print hanging in my kitchen.

 

So, that's you all up to date with my goings on, I'm currently working on a few commissions but as always I'll be blogging about them soon.