Very, very fortunately, I’ve landed a few commissions of late and these are keeping financial things ticking over. The requests are mostly painted reproductions of old photographs and other bits and bobs. I absolutely love doing these as they are the perfect way for me to break out of a certain mindset I have regarding my choices of objects. As I paint from nature there a some things that can be interesting to work out. For example, the tennis racquet. We’ll see how that goes. But recently I received a request to paint white roses. I thought that it would be fun and challenging. Yep, it was challenging, alright, especially as a good friend of mine noticed recently that alizarin crimson (which is great for tinting) completely disappears within a year. #%&*#!!!! Anyway, I hope to have my efforts posted soon. I had to try and capture the heads loosely in alla prima and give the rest of the image a fairly hazy effect without losing chroma and…

…I’ll post shots when I can, it’s easier to understand. The leather jacket’s coming on nicely, at last as are some other still life works. I found out that the way to improve at something (like still lifes) is to try and do things that are harder (portraits and landscapes – more on landscapes much later). Those make the prviously harder seeming things seem easier, of that makes sense. Anyway here are some little human head studies – a profile of me in pencil done with the aid of two mirrors. This was not easy for me, I must admit.  It’s funny what you notice whilst studying oneself as objectively as possible. My head’s shaped like a large peanut and I’ve got the ears of a munchkin.

Here’s a little biro doodle of  a ‘MOACOT’ head  it’s well rough but has a certain personality/feeling about it that I’m after so it goes into the scrap folder for later. and a detail of a small oil study for the same body at an underpainting stage – this time trying to get some colours right. Hmmm, if anyone’s got any hints, I’d be pleased to hear from them

This started out as a monochromatic study (which worked nicely) but then I just couldn’t leave it alone and now the words ‘flogging’ and ‘a’ and ‘dead horse’ keep echoing in my mind. That’s it for now,

Shaun