It is Monday the 6th of March. I'm at home.
I have had a good break from the desktop over the holidays. So here I am cleaning up 99 unread emails, paying bills and booking seats to the Richmond v Carlton game on the 23rd March.
And baking... The never fail Custard Powder Sponge Cake for afternoon Tea...here it is...
And back to painting... I am finally coming to the end of the Doggies work. Most of it has been A4 acrylic on canvas paper. Over the last month I have added to the collection with, at this stage about five paintings; oil on canvas. (I will put them up shortly, either here, on my shop or on Instagram. Instagram is much easier to load images than it is here. It is a lot quicker as it can all be done easily from the phone. Details will follow when they are up.)
After having worked on the smaller A4 acrylic pieces it has been good to go back to using oil on canvas. The acrylics are great for speed and quick drying time. They are a great back up if I am stuck at home due to school holidays or sickness. The acrylics are bright and vibrant and work really well when diluted with a medium. Given they are on paper they frame up well in either a simple black or white frame.
The oils on the other hand are much slower to work with in terms of drying time but this can be beneficial in that compositions can be changed and altered and scraped back as required.
The oils also have a capacity that enables you to work into them and build upon layers that can become quite sculptural, and almost velvet like in texture and lustre.
For a while now I have been wanting to paint in a way that is less dependant on either what I see directly in front of me, or on a reference photograph. So, I began by going back to my domestic scenes that I began with years ago and have worked at bringing in a newer approach that incorporates memory and imagination too, and a method that is hopefully freer and less academic in style.
Domestic Scene with the new Kitchen Aid above is the very first one I did. I have taken a similar approach with my bulldog footy images too, where the reality is diminished, the colours have been heightened and flattened; and the emphasis is on both narrative and expression.
We shall see how this progresses throughout the year. It is a process, undoubtedly.
Back soon, it's time for cake.
a similar composition to the one above
acrylic on canvas paper