Pastel sketch of Sandra

Today we had our second and final sitting with Sandra, the young german woman. I chose to work in pastel and feel that I managed to capture something of her. I prefer to do a fresh piece of work at each sitting as I feel it makes me work harder and keeps me on my toes; the time constraint of two and a half hours has an energising affect, or perhaps I like to kid myself that if my work lacks accuracy in these studies at least they have not been laboured over :-)

Green coffee pot

This still-life was set up for a workshop; the coffee pot was found at a flea market and a gift from the friend I was with at the time.

Oil sketch of Sandra

Sandra, a young german woman, sat for us at the scout hut yesterday morning. I have painted her once before as she has modelled for our life group, and I enjoyed the opportunity to paint her face which has such a natural beauty about it. These are the stages of this two and a half hour sketch:

Broken Heart

These chocolate hearts were a gift from my 'old veteran', 94 year old Arthur whose portrait you might remember from earlier last year. I thought it would be fun to set them out in readiness to paint them, today being 14th February and all that.... I broke the unwrapped heart into two lovely shapes, but having turned away for a few minutes, my bengal cat had other ideas; she will vouch that they taste good, it is just a pity the shape I was left with was not :-)

Life sketch of Tom

This oil sketch of Tom was painted from life at our regular fortnightly drop in session. Although the model gets regular breaks we aim to work on one sustained pose for the duration of the session, giving us plenty of time to mess up :-) This was my initial grisaille:

Citrus

Citrus fruit is one of my favourite things to paint. The jewel like colours and the transmitted light makes it a theme I keep coming back to!

Timepiece

This is a portrait of Patrick, 94 years old and one of life's special people! I named this portrait 'Timepiece' because of the story Pat told me whilst I was painting him. His watch is an antique Rolex oyster which he recieved on his 18th birhday before he joined up with the Royal Irish hussars for the 2nd World War. He was shot and lay wounded not knowing if he would survive and looked at his watch feeling their time had run out. He is still going strong; I felt the watch had to be a component of the painting and that is also why it had to be called 'timepiece', it incapsulated them both!

Oil sketch of Freddie

This is the third time freddie has sat for us at the scout hut and I have to admit he is something of a favourite for us all. Freddie not only sits beautifully (rock steady) we also admire the broody eyes, full lips and the good colour he has in his skin tones. As most of us are a little more advanced in years, we came to the conclusion it is an appreciation of all the things that we begin to lose with age :-(

Tea with fortune cookies

I found this teapot on ebay; I have been looking for a chinese teapot with wicker handle and being extremely fussy it has taken some time to find one that fits the bill. Now I am aware that as an an artist I should not be focusing on the object but rather on artistic concepts.... but a lovely subject is a great way to start! Stages of work in progress: