Wednesday 11 June 2008

Charcoal - Head of a Man

Head of a Man - 32" x 45" - charcoal on paper


For a while now I've been intending to start a series of drawings in charcoal. Up until now I haven't had a chance to really get started on them, but I've had an image in my mind of how I want these drawings to look. The idea was to keep them quite loose and almost "painterly", but with focused areas of tighter detail. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get the effect I was after just using straightforward vine or compressed charcoal on it's own so after a bit of experimenting, I've found that a combination of brushes, stumps, pounce bag, pencils, powdered and compressed charcoal gets pretty close to the idea I was trying to get at. I'm still looking for a way to "paint" with powdered charoal. I think spraying it with something and spreading it with a brush is the way to do it, but I need to work out what to use, possibly some kind of alcohol. I'll post more of these as they come.


Wednesday 4 June 2008

Still Life with Pot and Matches


Still Life with Pot and Matches - 18" x 14" - oil on panel

This is the first in a new series of larger scale still life paintings. The wooden compartments will be a recurring theme, so I'll see where they take me.

Stillness and Meditation

“Seek in a still life stillness and meditation. You may find there action, drama and passion, but the best still life is that wherein inward calm is attained in quietness.” - Albert Plasschaert, Dutch art critic.