Chickens on the bales - acrylic painting for SAA art competition

This is a painting I finished this week for a competition in an art magazine. I don't know why they chose chickens as the subject! I have not painted animals before so I was surprised when this caught my interest for some reason. My end result was much better than I anticipated and I thoroughly enjoyed painting it. I'm pleased with the brushwork and how I worked the acrylic paint.

Narcissus

Spring is supposed to be here but it's hard to see underneath the snow! The spring flowers in my garden are slowly coming through now. I love the colours here and the subtle variations of hue. It just shouts out the new life of spring.

Sunny morning

We have been having some bizarre spring weather here - snow and sunshine on the same day. The sunshine inspired me to cock a snook at the freezing cold and paint a sunny morning landscape. I love the warmth of the sunshine coming in through my studio window, heating the room (and me) whilst all outside it still cold. There's bold brushstrokes and a fluidity of brushwork in this picture and it makes me feel warm just looking at it.

Coffee morning - acrylic paint on art card

I've been doing a lot of portraiture recently, and this is one example I'm particularly pleased with. I've tried to follow the Hayward Veal impressionist mantra of 'paint what you see, not what you know', and tried to be minimal in line and detail whilst capturing the essence of the person. I'm also very pleased with the colouring in this picture.

Tessie O'Shea Portrait

I generally prefer to paint portraits of men - their faces seem to have more 'character', from my artist's eye anyway. But there are exceptions of course. One is Tessie O'Shea. She was a true performer, with her effervescent and infectious character coming through in her face. If you watch an old video of her and turn down the sound, just looking at her face and theatrical posture is a 'show' in itself - big smile, big jewellery, big performance. What a star she was. And she could play a mean uke too!

Like the Formby portrait, I've tried to get a vibrancy in this painting of Tessie. I wanted to resist the temptation to add too much detail and clutter. Hayward Veal had an exercise where he would try to finish a painting within 10 minutes. This painting took longer than 10 minutes but I still tried to do it as quickly as I could as I feel that urgency and immediacy fits perfectly with the gusto of Tessie's performances.

George Formby Colour Portrait

I had a couple of books at Christmas so have been reading up on some of my favourite artists, Rolf Harris and his mentor, the Australian impressionist Hayward Veal, the 'vibrant acrylics' impressionist artist Hashim Akib, and the Austrian painter Voka.

I love impressionism and loose brush work and have been trying to incorporate ideas from all of these artists into my own work, particularly Voka. He describes his style as 'spontaneous realism', and brings 'immediacy, vigour and enthusiasm' into his paintings.

I've attempted to do that in this observation of George Formby, from his performance of 'I Wish I Was Back On The Farm' from the 1940 film 'Spare A Copper', using larger brushes and rich acrylic paint as much as possible. 

Portrait

Another thing that's been taking up my time recently is experimenting with portraiture. Traditionally I'm a landscape painter but I'm keen to develop my portrait work and also have a desire to do some caricatures. It's a different skill, capturing a person in paint. One person I admire is Rolf Harris who has painted some wonderful portraits in his time, all in his own style yet all capturing the essence of the sitter.

Here's a portrait of a young child that I've just completed - some people from the ukulele club may know him! It's acrylic paint on art card, A3 size. I'm pleased with it. There's some things I'd change were I to do it again, but that's the joy (and pain!) of paintings I feel - no work is ever really 'finished' or 'perfect' but the artist must have the discipline to say, 'Stop, that's enough!'