Palm

Yet another day at home with a sick child. Spent the day working up some monoprints and this is one of the finished pictures. I'm really pleased with this one. Started a caricature of Stan Laurel - OK it's not hard to caricature him, but it's fun!

I can't stand it anymore!!!!!

Nothing drastic, but the level of mess at home has finally freaked me out. Spent a long time tidying and cleaning today - ugh! This photo of the cat will explain why!

Well OK, I just put it in because she's so darn cute! Dominic is feeling much better today so I could finally use the vacuum cleaner! I think I'd prefer dynamite!

I did allow myself a couple of hours to mono print in the morning and this is one of the nicer results. Some need some work as they haven't turned out as anticipated but that's all part of the learning curve.

Had a phone call from Google about website optimisation. Nice because he didn't rabbit on in techno-babble!

Yin and yang

Nothing new to post today as what little time I've had has been focused on the commission. Lots of ideas but nothing is really gelling yet. I've sent the proofs to the client so hopefully their preferences will help gel the composition.

So here is a monoprint from a few weeks ago. It's an abstract textural piece. I titled it "Completeness" because of the yin/yang nature of the image.

More mono print

Today was odd, I got distracted by trivia. Plodding on with the painting but distractions kept interfering. This is one of the mono prints from Saturday. The quality of the image is poor as it was photographed in poor light. I'll replace the picture with a scanned image once it is dry enough! That's a few days away yet.

Oil painting

No caricatures today. I've been experimenting with oils over the past few days, trying palette knives on a picture of an eagle for my daughter - she likes wildlife. Struggling to stop and leave it alone, still want to fiddle and get the same effect as I can with brushes. Generally struggling to get a more refined effect, but maybe I shouldn't be with a knife, perhaps crude is the way to go. It certainly give a more spontaneous effect. This is the virtually finished effect. I need to define the beak some more but it's quite effective. Definitely a distance picture! More practice needed...

I've started a caricature of Halle Berry, need to ink up and paint. Life is so hectic at the moment with children's activities I'm struggling to get many caricatures done. I'm managing some outdoor sketching, mainly buildings. I'm also wanting to explore the oils more, but not necessarily caricatures.

Jim Carrey

Well this is Jim Carrey. Not my best likeness by a long chalk but quite a pleasing result nonetheless. It has not been a productive few days from the portrait/caricature front. The oil paintings are going quite well, but they're a still life and landscape. I've been playing with ripple effects in oil, as you can see below.

I think I prefer the bottom one. I was intending to work them more but something about the simple rendering of the shapes was quite appealing. These were done about 2 weeks ago but I've only just felt happy about putting them on the scanner bed, oil takes soooooooooo long to dry! Definitely a watery them going on today. I can't say that I consciously planned things that way! Just a process of evolution I suppose.