Donato

From a photo I found on the internet - oil on canvas 15 x 15 inches.

Pretty dog

This is an oil painting on canvas 12 inches by 12 inches - I got the photo from Paint my Photo.

Cat in Sunshine

I'm experimenting with ways to depict fur, which can be a bit tricky on cats. I'm not sure whether this works or not. This is oil on linen canvas, 10 x 8 inches.

Morning at Atbara

This is a painting I did of my husband Art, in our old house. Art died 5 years ago yesterday. I'm very lucky to have found a lovely new man, but I still think about Art every day and talk about him all the time, always with a smile and a laugh. The only thing that makes me sad is thinking about him when he was ill and in pain. He was a mad character and had a habit of collecting silly items, some of which are shown in this pic. On the table is a dog which sings and dances 'New York New York' and hanging up is a wire model of a man riding a 3 wheeled bike. On the table is his 'smoking box' full of his smoking paraphernalia. Heaven help me if I ever tried to tidy any of these things away! I was very lucky to have spent 21 years sharing my life with this man, 21 years full of laughs - he was very funny. I still see him in my dreams sometimes - I look forward to that.

Second stage of kitten

This is the kitten after the second layer of oil paint has been applied. When this is dry I will probably add whiskers and stuff. I was thinking of doing little paintings (6 x 6) of cats to sell but if they all take this ridiculously long time to do I won't be making any money!
I havent really got the hang of oil paints yet, especially how to get a piece of work to a very detailed stage... I'll just have to keep practising I guess.

Larger painting

It was very enjoyable doing this 14 x 10 painting. I started it from life and continued from a photo. The reason being that I only had a couple of hours in the afternoon to do it when the light was the same. This is a big problem I must get over, because I would have preferred to do it all from life, but I work much too slowly at the moment. I do think I learned a bit from doing it though, and it's number 23 on the way to 120!

Door

I just moved slightly to the left from the last picture to paint our front door. There's something about this painting I don't like and I think it's the curtains.
I've realised this blog has changed a bit now. It's supposed to be a sketch blog but for the moment it's about my struggle with oil painting. I haven't really done much drawing lately - will have to do some more soon.

Corner

This is a corner of the boat with detritus on the shelves as usual. It rained all day while I did this. The good thing about being on a boat when it rains is it's so noisy on the roof. It reminds me of rainy caravan holidays when I was young! Anyway this is my 21st painting - 98 to go! I was pleased with the way this went but I did put more effort into it. I did a tonal sketch and tried to make sure the values were correct. It's also quite messy and not too detailed, which I like.

The man with no face

My other half is getting a bit peeved that I'm not painting his features! This was done quite quickly, with a big brush. I think I do need longer at the moment so I have time to assess values and colours properly.

Freedom

I did this one using a palette knife - I found it quite liberating and fun - I'm not sure I think much of the result though! I've been reading a book called 'Painting the Impressionist Landscape' by Lois Griffel of the Cape Cod School of Art. Apparently students there are instructed to use only a putty knife when painting. This book has encouraged me to learn more about colour theory, so today I've ordered Betty Jackson's book on colour.

Struggle

This is my next effort - a jug that I really like and some shells. It was a struggle to get the colours right and I'm not happy with it but it probably looks better on here than it does in real life! I took 4 hours on this little one but tomorrow I'm going to do another painting and give myself a time limit.

Finished article

It's not really finished, and I've worked on it for 4 hours. It's only 8 x 6! I think it's going in the right direction so I'm stopping now even though there are still things I could change. It's only practice, and I think I should move on to the next one! I think the slowness is caused by the amount of time it takes me to mix the correct colours, but that should improve I hope!
By the way, my followed blogs list has reappeared.

Work in progress

Blogger has just done a strange thing and deleted all the blogs I follow - so if you're one of them please don't take it personally!
There has been a bit a gap in my posts lately - because I only have a little time each evening to paint so one painting can take me 2 or 3 days. (You know how slow I am anyway!) So I thought I'd post this as a work in progress - I have done 2 hours on it and will hopefully finish it tonight!

Pear

Here is number 16. I think I am slowly getting the hang of it. I find the thing that takes time is mixing the correct colours. Hopefully I will speed up with this eventually.

Third attempt

Here is another attempt. It's 6x8 and took me two and a half hours.I thought I'd choose a simpler subject and I was more methodical with this one, following instructions from my favourite book, Kevin Macpherson's 'Fill your oil paintings with light and colour'. I worked quite slowly, making sure I had the colours and values as correct as I could.
I've found a great website called 120 paintings (http://jmahorney.blogspot.com) by Jeff Mahorney. He heard someone say that you have to paint 120 bad paintings before you can say you know anything about painting. He did paint 120 paintings and learnt a lot! The transformation from when he started is amazing. I'm going to try and follow this path and hopefully I will make progress like he did. I've worked out that altogether I've done about 15 oil paintings up till now, so I'll be continuing to count them!

Speeding up

I decided I'm going to do some small oil paintings and try and speed up. As you can see I am not used to oils. This took me 2 hours and it's nowhere near finished. Hopefully things will eventually improve if I practice enough!