River Stones palette knife painting, 6x6inch

River Stones 1 oil palette knife painting

6x6" on 1.5cm gallery wrapped canvas

Available

Apologies for my absence from blogging. Summer is a hiatus for me where painting is concerned as we have lots of visitors and my granddaughter comes to stay. Add to that, builders at the beginning of summer and maybe you will forgive me.

About this painting
A small stream near home that turns into a raging river after storms and when the ice in the mountains melt. The level can rise by about 4 metres. It is so hard to photograph the blues and turquoises to give the true colours of the painting, but it looks better in real life.

How it looks displayed on a mini easel

I will try to post my long awaited report about the plein air workshop I attended in the French Alps with Richard Robinsn over the next couple of days.

River Stones - Water and Rocks Day 3, 30 paintings in 30 days

 River Stones palette knife painting

Day 3, Jan 30 in 30 challenge

Oil on box canvas

15x15x2cm (6"x6")

Contact me about this or any other painting

My Etsy Shop

This is a river at Castellane a small town on the way to the Verdon Gorges. The river is fast flowing and icy cold, with bluey-green water.

The colours are over-saturated. Oh the joys of photography! Although I have manipulated the colours in Photoshop, the uploaded photo is another story. One thing that springs out is my lack of variation in the colours between the foreground and distance. These challenges are good for picking up on areas for improvement, and even though it is a small painting, the changes in tone still need to be there.

Some close-ups

Autumn Quiet oil painting

Autumn Calm oil painting

With a nod to Emil Gruppe

Oil on 3-ply wood gesso panel

20x30cm (approx 7x12inches)

Available on Daily Paintworks

I came across a painting 'Autumn in Vermont' by Emil Gruppe and loved the light he captured in it.

I roughly sketched in the composition and continued the painting without looking at the reference as although influenced by him, I wanted this to be my painting.

About this painting
I am starting a love-hate relationship with this surface. It is so smooth. I usually like to work on a textured ground and, although I added an additional layer of gesso, it was still quite smooth and very absorbent. I was fighting the board a bit and so resorted to using a brush in combination with the knife. The paint also dries much quicker on this surface. It is brilliant white, and although I used a multicoloured underpainting (cool colours for dark areas and warm colours for light areas) I think the painting has a nice luminous feel to it.

Some Close-ups

And how it would look framed

Refreshing Waters for Oscar - Day 6 of the 30 day challenge

Refreshing Waters for Oscar

18x24cm 

Oil on MDF canvas panel

NFS

One of my nephews saw and older, large painting while he was here and fell in love with it. I promised to paint him a similar painting but smaller for his birthday in October. This is it.

About this painting

This is a favourite spot of ours in the summer. The river is Le Loup and at this point it goes through a mini canyon. In the hot days it is a cool and refreshing spot to sit and refresh ourselves under the shade of the trees. If we have visitors, especially children, they love to play in the cool, clear water which comes directly from the mountains. It still needs a few finishing touches when the paint has firmed up a bit.

Calm at the Lake rework progress

This is how the painting looked after I scraped back some of the pastel

And after the first stages of the block-in

And this is how it looks at the moment

I still need to work on it a while and will the update in a couple of days.

I used mainly Rembrandt pastel. This is now at the stage where I wish I had some softer pastel to give me a few juicy strokes.

I feel it already looks better compositionally, and would be interested in what you think or if you can see areas for improvement.

Check out the original version and my reasons for reworking it HERE

Tarn Gorges palette knife painting

Tarn Gorges

Oil on Canvas panel

35x27 cm (14"x11")
Painted on an MDF panel,
mounted on an additional white painted panel to give a border.
Final size to fit inside a standard frame.

I painted this, my first all knife painting from a very old photograph I found in the back of the drawer.

Here is a brief description of my progress:

I first drew in the large masses using a watercolour pencil and then blocked in the lights using warm colours and the darks using cool colours. I used a light yellow for the lightest part to make sure that this area would look nice and sunny. I then gradually added colour wet into wet, in an extra 3 to 4 layers. The first to make the colour look 'real', the second to break up the masses into 3 or 4 areas depending on the light, the third to refine the colour in the masses and the fourth layer for the refinement. I used only pure colour, mainly mixing it on the painting as I went along. I also worked to keep the shadows not too dark but just dark enough.