From September till September

As the haze of summer is ending and autumn slowly starts to begin i thought i would be fitting to post this up for you guys. However it has taken me four seasons to complete it.

The trees shape has sort of changed considerably during this time, once upon a time it had leaves, now it doesn't. The decision was cemented in my subconscious after a few weeks of commuting to work passing lots of naked gnarly branches. The colours of the cracked bark, mould and moss seemed to sparkle in my eyes. The easiest way i could describe it would be how they would look if they were on that Apple Macbook retina display advert on the telly. I like to say that i also saw the characters that i painted running around them, but that may just may make me sound a bit mental.

The furry chap, like the trees also changed quite a bit. Once he was red then he was blue, for a few months i couldn't make my mind up but then umber seemed to work in my opinion.

Throughout a lot of the time while painting this i was listening to the album by The Knife called Shaking the Habitual. I kind of picture all the characters dancing around to it when i was listening so maybe you could to. Have a listen by clicking below if you have a spare five minutes you bunch of busy people

Enjoy the last beams of that sun and im sure we will chat again some time soon

Revisions, Revisions, Revisions.....

Well if you have read my blog before i thought id finished it. However i got it out to have a look at it after a good half a year or so and decided that it needed a few drastic changes, things that now seem blindingly obvious. Maybe my previous portrait attempt (again revert back to old posts) that i wasn't too pleased with did have some benefits after all.
Apologies for the bad phone image, decent camera-less at the mo

Because of this its probably best to add some close up images so here you go.

You may of noticed the little character the young lady is clutching has changed its appearance. I saw this photo of myself when i was a young happy chap and sort of used that as a point of reference. The other lad with the grim face is my cousin who i will not name as hes now bigger than me and would probably do me over if i did. I on the other hand appear to be having a grand old time. Simple things for simple minds and all that.

Back to The Drawing Board

Hey

Some people may know this person below, some people may not. Some people may know the person but cant recognise him through this portrait which means i have done a bad job.

To be honest i couldn't tell what sort of job i've done on it at all anymore. Staring at this painting, looking at it from different angles until the image and colour blur and muddle in my head and staring at the poor victim who has posed for this until his flesh resembled hints of olive green, purples, blues and raw umber oil paint colours have left me inconclusive as to whether this is any good or just a load of old tosh.

I can safely say that this has been the most humbling experience for me as an artist. Approaching this with either arrogance, naivety or perhaps both i thought i would be able to do a sterling job ( It is actually a submission for the National Portrait Awards).  During the process it was apparent that i still have a great deal to learn and the past seven years of sacrificing so much for my practice may have to come to an end. But these could all just be ramblings on how im feeling at the moment.... so maybe onwards and upwards or errrmm maybe not.

Christopher and the Crab

Hi

Im pleased to announce that as of now a illustrated children's story of mine is available to purchase on the online shop that has everything; Amazon. The story is called Christopher and the Crab which is illustrated by myself and written by Alison Molyneux. Its quite nice to have this released as this was first a story started for my final major project at uni three years ago and problems with a different publisher meant at one point that this may never have saw the light of day. So thank you Story Meadows Books.

Also available soon will be the re-release of the 'Thud in the Wood' previously released in 2010, once again written by Alison.

Here below are some pictures of Christopher and the Crab. I often find these more appealing to look at than words. Click these words to be taken to the books page on Amazon