I find doing studies is invaluable for experimenting with colour and fine-tuning the composition. Here are a couple as examples.

The painting for “Everyone Likes Party Rings” has been completed and sold. Between the study and the finished painting the background transmuted to a soft green, and I can see the same will happen with “Bowl of Cherries”, though that painting hasn’t been begun yet. Studies live  on the studio wall or propped up on the bookcase so that they catch my eye when passing, and prompt thoughts or decisions.

When I tell people at my son’s school that I’m an artist I’m sure they think that I waft about painting watercolours in a field full of poppies while eating Cadbury’s Flakes (you have to be a certain age to remember that commercial).

Not only do I not have the figure to waft but at this time of the year I am more likely to be swathed in layers of woollies doing mundane but important tasks as the light is too bad & and the days too short to paint much seeing as I only use natural light. The last few weeks have been spent thus:
!: Finishing the accounts
2: Updating the website. This seems to take an inordinate amount of time, how does newblood manage with all those images to deal with?
3: Faffing about with a Facebook page just for me as an artist not personal use (thought I may as well give it a go as other friends use it for professional reasons).
4: Stocktaking. Literal and emotional. What has and hasn’t worked over the last year? How much paper, canvas & materials do I have in? Photographing and listing new work. What do I want to work on next?
5: Rethinking: Looking at paintings that aren’t finished, or haven’t worked and either finishing/reworking them or consigning them to the back of the shelf.
6: Planning: That long planned exercise in a series of water paintings or Yorkshire landscapes? More work on linocuts?

Would much rather just be painting or printmaking but all of the above needs to get done. However the days at last are getting lighter and longer, and yet still the closest I’ve come to that field of poppies is the triptych above (must add to number 5).

Well, since May! That’s the last time I blogged and when I started work on this linocut. It then got put to one side due to portrait commissions, summer holidays, preparing for an exhibition and having the builders in my studio for a month. It’s only taken six months but now it is finally finished and on my page. I hope it’s not just me who has unfinished projects languishing in corners. Even now there are 3 unfinished canvases looking at me reproachfully.

I started with a familiar motif, love hearts, and am now trying to see how other images will translate into this medium. I’m using calligraphy fibre tip pens at the moment to develop the line. I couldn’t resist drawing this cherry cupcake. In the sketch I have stripped it back to line only; I won’t know until I start cutting the lino how true it will stay to the initial image.