FIRST BLOG OF 2015

It's the first blog of the new year, and in all fairness it's been a pretty manic few months in the Morgan household, but lets start at the beginning.

January saw my Mum and Dad celebrate there 30th wedding anniversary and I wanted to do something extra special for them and so I decided to take some time out of my schedule to create them there own original painting, but what to paint??

This was actually easy to decide because during my show in November a client had called me over who was speaking with my parents, when I went to speak with them she asked me why my Mum and Dad didn't have one of my originals, we joked a little and then I remembered...wedding anniversary!

I asked my parents "what would you even have" and my mum went on to say that she loved Walnut whips but hated the actual walnut and always broke it off to give it to my Dad, I quite liked this small gesture of togetherness and decided that this would be the subject for there  Wedding anniversary present.

 

"You're the Walnut to my Whip"

18" x 18"

Oil on wooden panel

 

I also decided this year was going to be the start of a new body of work, as artists I think its good to evolve and allow that to happen naturally without forcing it.

My new work will be more narrative, sometimes this narrative will be serious, sometimes comical.

 I think that the majority of the time I may use toys to explain this narrative and I'm excited to produce them as I have so many ideas.

 

The first piece of this new series was created during January, this idea had been playing around in my head for quite some time and was so pleased when I had finally settled on a composition.

 

 

"Make Peace Not War"

40" x 20"

Oil on wooden panel

 

SOLD

 

PRINTS AVAILABLE

 

I decided to use toy soldiers propped onto wooden toy bricks, the bricks spelling out the narrative clearly "make peace not war" like many people, I hate war and although I'm under no illusion that world peace is around the corner I'd like to think maybe one day we will all just ....get along....but I doubt it.

 

I decided to keep all the soldiers green so to not give them "Sides" and I changed almost all the colours of the blocks because the original colours were quite dull, thankfully this piece was really well received and sold the day after I had created it which was totally amazing and cemented my belief that this new avenue was the right way to go with my work  and Im currently working on the next

 

Also Excitedly I have created a limited edition print run on this piece

The image below shows one of the prints next to the original painting and as you can see the colour matching is very good. Each print is 700mm x 351mm It's printed on smooth rag 300gsm paper using lucia pigment colours, each print is hand signed and a certificate of authenticity provided with matching serial numbered hologram on both the certificate and the print

 

Prints are sold unframed although I can provide a framing and fine art delivery  service but obviously this would be at an additional cost

 

If you are interested then please email me on  - chris_morgan13@Hotmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

I also decided to create a new portrait of my father, I created a portrait of him back in 2012 and so I just wanted to create another to see my improvements over the last 3 years, I have been studying skin tones and form quite intensely over the years as I really want to get good.

 

I was so pleased with how this piece turned out and I feel showed a true evolution in my painting, I have decided to create a few more portraits throughout the year to keep on learning. How many I will actually do I have no idea as this will be along side my still life pieces.

 

 

Portrait of my father

18" x 18"

Oil on panel

NFS

 

And last but certainly not least, on February 15th 2015 at 00:48 my new son Charlie Sydney Morgan arrived in the world, It's wonderful to be a father again to this little bundle and have enjoyed taking a couple of weeks off to enjoy him fully and help my wife out, My other son Lewis is totally in love with him and we now feel complete as a family unit. My drive to work even harder to provide for them has increased and I'm so thankful that my work continues to make people smile

 

 

Charlie Sydney Morgan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack Daniels, Mini portraits and Liverpool

Here is the latest commission that I finished a couple of weeks ago and let me tell you it really did test me. I was always unsure about doing this subject matter as it was such an iconic brand and the lettering was so complicated.

But I was encouraged to give it a go, and three weeks later was still painting the label, moving back and forward nudging the letters a little this way and a little that, making them slightly bigger or slightly smaller. 

My Patience was seriously tested but I persevered and I'm really happy with the end result. 

J.D - Comission

30" x 30"

Oil on panel

SOLD

After the tough slog with the JD bottle and the fact that my last few pieces were so large and complicated I needed to take a few days out, so I painted a mini portrait of my step son Spencer. 

Spencer

8" x 8"

Oil on panel. 

N.F.S

Now as you will have known from the previous posts I have been commissioned to paint a commemorative portrait of Steven Gerrard to celebrate his 100 caps for England and 600 appearances for Liverpool. I was originally supposed to be meeting with them in August but with changing schedules for both myself and Steven we had to keep pushing it further and further back until eventually we settled on a date we were both free in November.

The night before the delivery of the painting the usual doubts started to creep into any artist's mind...does it look like him...will he like it..so after I finished up painting that night at around 10:30pm I went online to flick through some images of Steven to just put these doubts to rest, only to find that his eyes were blue and not the brown that I had painted them! my reference picture for the main portrait was so poor that I was unable to see the true colour of his eyes and as they were so dark in colour assumed they were a dark brown. 

Panic kicked in at at 11:00 pm I got the easel out and paints and started to correct the eye colour and re shape his nose slightly.....thankfully It came out well and looked even more like him so the gamble paid off.   

I drove up to Liverpool with my wife, who had already stated that she was not in the slightest bit bothered by SG and that the whole football player thing, didn't really impress her (This statement will be important a little later on) 

We arrived at Melwood training ground were we were greeted by the LFC Security, after explaining who I was and what I was doing there he invited me to park in the car park, what he didn't tell me was the restrictions of parking at the very top end....I couldn't see any spaces in the areas he had said, so I continued to drive to the top end of the car park where the caliber of cars jumped from the ordinary to the extraordinary, cars so flashy and expensive that I reddened in my face at the fact I was driving a "Normal" car and that I was currently backing my huge 7 seater family car into the only available space between a Porsche and an Aston Martin, I unloaded the car to then here the Security shouting "No...No..you cant park here this is for the players"

We ended up parking on the road side and walking into the main reception we were ushered into a room ready to meet SG. 

When he arrived he had just finished training,he was really lovely and was really pleased with his portrait which was a huge relief. We chatted for quite some time about the painting and how to market it to gain the best kind of exposure to gain the best amount we can to donate to the Christie Cancer hospital. 

And what we discovered is that we both knew the owner of the huge high end clothing store Flannels in Manchester where he had seen my latest sports painting "Untitled" hanging in the office of the owner. I don't think he realized that the art work he had admired hanging in Flannels was done by the same artist who had just painted his own portrait. 

Now the biggest surprise for me was not the amazing all round experience of once again being a part of the LFC team for the day, or the amazing cars that I got to admire, or the meeting of SG and seeing other huge players just walking the corridors....No...the biggest surprise for me was the reaction of my wife when Steven walked into the room, (its at this point i'd like to point out her statement a few paragraphs up)

She was really star struck and all of a quiver....to the point where I could see her visibly shaking taking the picture of myself and Steven with the painting.

I Never expected her to react in this way....but I'll let her off....I mean it was Steven Gerrard. 

Myself and Steven Gerrard 

With his signed commemorative painting 

We were then invited to have some dinner where the players dine,we were really looked after by this lovely catering lady called Carol who I had taken  shine to when I had visited last year. 

As you can expect all the dishes were extremely healthy but that's just fine by me and so I sat down to a dish of rice, chicken and broccoli, the wife ate nothing....as she was still churned up from meeting SG. 

I said my goodbyes to SG and then left my painting with the main organizer of this whole event Chris, who is one of the most amazing and genuine guys I've ever had the pleasure to meet, he has personally raised sooo much money for the Christie and I personally cant thank him enough. 

I'll keep you updated when the Auction is up and running.

Latest Boxing/Sports painting

Over the past month or so I have been working away in the studio working on my latest sport painting, and thought I would blog about the process from start to finish.

It all started whilst I was working out at my local gym and noticed this guy working out and immediately I thought to myself that he would be perfect for a painting I'd had in my head for a while. He was big at 6ft 3 and was covered in tattoos, so, not one to let an opportunity slip by I approached him and explained that I was an artist and told him all about my new body of work based on sports. He told me that he actually was a semi professional boxer and that he was in training for a fight, right there and then I knew he was the perfect guy to model for my latest piece. 

I booked him in for a photo shoot about three weeks after we had initially met, I had a rough idea on the composition I wanted and  so went about taking a number of photographic references.

When I then got back to the studio I uploaded all the photos into photoshop and found that the image was making his skin tone far to orange for the final look I wanted in my painting.

I wanted a loose background mixed of blues, whites, and browns but this orange tint to his skin tone would have made the figure sit awkwardly against my background and so I decided to use my own skin tone to mix the flesh colour as  I felt my skin tone would work better in the final painting.

Once I had mixed a light, medium and dark skin colour based on my arm tones,  I painted these three colours onto a piece of paper so I could continually refer back to them with each paint sitting so I had  continuity throughout the painting. 

I used at least three layers on each part of the portrait with each layer adding more drawing corrections, tonal correction, and details

Below are three images taken with my mobile as I painted the portrait section of my painting

Sketching and Blocking in

Here I used a thin mix of Burnt Umber to roughly sketch out the head,and then using my mixed skin tone started to block in tone to start adding form to the painting. 

Refining tone, and fixing drawing

Here I blended the tones out using a nice soft Sable blending brush and started refining the eye socket and nose It was here that I noticed that the head was the incorrect shape and as you see from the back of his neck to the top of his head the curve goes to high and gives him a distorted head shape. 

Finished portrait

As you can see I have fixed the head shape, and added several details like the stubble on his head, veins on his temple and facial hair etc as well as continually changing tones. 

With this piece I wanted it to be strong yet gentle at the same time, the boxer portraying the strength not only because of the nature of the sport of boxing but also because of the sheer physicality of the model. 

But to balance this I believe the pose and expression on his face add a gentleness to the image. 

I was thinking of a suitable title for the image but have decided even with all the fantastic suggestions by my facebook, twitter and Instagram followers I would like the viewer to decide why the boxer is in the position he is and what is running through his mind. And so I decided not to title so It doesn't influence the viewers thought process. 

"Untitled"

40" x 40"

Oil on wooden panel. 

Available at the Darren Baker Gallery London 

0207 580 5332