Category Archives: Paintings

Layering the Plants

A little time in the studio this afternoon led to getting the right hand patch of wormwood complete in grey, and a layer of mixed greens over the left hand side to find that odd blue-ish green. I’ll re-draw the … Continue reading

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Wormwood Expansion

I’m moving super slowly this last couple of days, feeling weary and worn out, but I’ve expanded the Wormwood on the left of the canvas and laid a layer of dark leaves down on the right. I’ve yet to add … Continue reading

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Elements in the Magician’s Landscape

I’ve drawn the landscape for the Magician’s world onto the canvas, with distant mountain range, a trough of water, a cross of long rags attached to sticks, and rocks and clouds that resemble each other. All four elements are represented in … Continue reading

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Magician with Blues

I painted the Empress’ morning glory flowers blue this morning, but otherwise didn’t get much work done, spending a lot of time thinking about how the painting goes forward from this point and fiddling with cleaning brushes and tidying the … Continue reading

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Green glaze

Working pretty fast, I’ve added a glaze of Sap Green over the greyscale leaves of ivy and morning glory. Easy work, but a huge difference! I’ll add some Iron Oxide red to the leaves tomorrow when this is dry. Rich … Continue reading

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Wormwood and Cast Shadows

Drop shadows make a huge difference to the way an object sits within a painting. Now that there’s a glaze of Raw Umber around the morning glory and some highlighting of some smaller leaves the plant seems more substantial. Although … Continue reading

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Morning Glory Foundation

Morning Glory is perfect for this painting, with its heart shaped leaves, wonderfully colourful flowers and reputation as a plant that opens doorways to other worlds. It’s a fragile flower that lasts for a short time, but one that blooms … Continue reading

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Magician

I really don’t want to leave this eight feet square blank canvas sitting with nothing on it, so I decided to grid it out and place the Magician’s figure onto the new surface. She lines up beautifully with the golden … Continue reading

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In the Shadow of the Empress

Now that the yellow dress is mostly complete I’ve begun adding the shadows cast by the Empress onto the bodies beside her, imagining where the light falls. The orange dress needed a lot of work, with much of it dropping … Continue reading

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Drop Shadows, Lighten Fabric

The base work for the pattern is complete, and a couple of my students said “I’d wear that dress” so I think I’ll let this dry, lighten it up a bit, then pop a bit of yellow into it to … Continue reading

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