Category Archives: Tarot-related paintings

I’ve returned from the mountains, where I enjoyed a little camping beneath forest pines with some good friends. There’s something incredibly refreshing about sleeping outside amongst trees. Much of the forest was burnt to a crisp a couple of years … Continue reading →

Raw sienna makes a huge difference to the appearance of the work, making the surface of the skull and the shadows drop back and giving them some age. I’m particularly pleased with the appearance of the skull, although I think … Continue reading →

Continuing with the work on the skull to improve the rendering has resulted in a much wider mouth and an increasingly savage appearance. I still need to work on the mouth to improve it, having moved his upper teeth higher … Continue reading →

I’ve moved across the painting to work on the skull of the angel, which really needs some help. I’ll have to rework the bottom of it because the upper jaw’s teeth are too low and irritating me beyond belief, so … Continue reading →

The hands got coated in that black glaze that I used on the sky to darken it, so I’ve got to rework them with a layer of white. Once the white is complete I’ll get into a re-rendering with Van … Continue reading →

Ribs don’t join the sternum as bone, there’s a cartilage bridge that connect them. I’ve not seen a recently exhumed skeleton, so I’m not entirely sure what this would look like, and my only real medical skeleton has some rather … Continue reading →

I finished up the first layer of the pebbles, which need more work to make them effective, then got into the most radical change the painting has seen since I decided to put the sea of skulls into the landscape. … Continue reading →

It’s so good to get a full day in the studio! Having completed the warm and cool work, done the white highlights and fixed the blue ribcage by turning it brown inside, I’ve turned to getting the pebbles in the … Continue reading →