With a little sketching and contemplation the composition is becoming clear, and more lines are on the canvas to guide the drawing of the Virtues. My students have been invaluable help because much of this work requires three people simply to draw a straight line across the wall! I’m very excited about working with them. [...]
I’m swamped with administrative work for the new semester, so painting has had to wait for a short time until we get started. I’m particularly looking forward to beginning my Life Painting and Drawing classes, because working from a model in the studio offers a greater challenge to the artist because of the slight (although [...]
A small, very light package arrived from China yesterday, filled with beautiful green and blue peacock feathers, so I’ve re-started work on the wings because they were so overly simple and flat compared to the rest of the painting. So far I’m keeping the work monochromatic, waiting to add the classic eye shape of peacock [...]
I enlisted my kids to help put the first coat of gesso onto the big canvas. They’re really good at helping me in the studio, seldom complaining and usually cheerful, especially when there are donuts and lunch offered as tasty treats. After lunch I shot photos of Hayley, one of my drawing students, who modeled [...]
I mentioned yesterday that I needed to darken the inside of the mouth to make the teeth jump a little, so today I got into using Raw Sienna to yellow the bones of the skull a little, and mixed with a little Van Dyke Brown to darken the shadows of the opening. Much better! Once [...]
I’ve finished the brown layer of the skulls, which means that everything should start moving a bit faster now. I’m very pleased to see how much the painting has opened out, with the skulls streaming out off the sides of the canvas. I’m also very happy with the skeleton’s legs, which I extended so that [...]
I feel extremely fortunate to have seen as much Neolithic art as I have. Here on Anglesey there are some excellent examples of rock art still within its context, dating from four thousand years before the current era. It’s incredible that it’s still here to be seen. First four pictures are at or around Barclodiad [...]
Photos from the Trefignath burial mound near Holyhead, on Anglesey, showing two of the chambers. In the third shot you can see a band of quartz crystals that were on the back wall of the largest of the three chambers. The building was raised in about 3750 BC, then sealed by about 2250 BC, so [...]
I still love this stuff as much as ever. Anglesey, North Wales. This was the last stronghold of the druids before they were annihilated by Agricola, who slaughtered them and overthrew the sacred groves. There’s not a single stone circle left on Anglesey, just fragments. From the Roman propagandist Tacitus: “… [Suetonius Paulinus] prepared accordingly [...]
Spent the last couple of days hiking in the Borders of England and Scotland, first in Lancashire where the Emperor Hadrian built his two thousand year old wall, walking past the quarries from whence the legions cut its stones and the forts that were used to guard the Northern frontier of the Roman empire against [...]
