Fun Departure.

After finishing my asparagus series I just wanted to let rip and free myself up with something a little more exuberant, wild even. I had a photograph of some oil tubes lying resplendent on a sunlit studio desk so I just started painting that with the paint I had left on the palette. It grew and grew and I piled on the paint in ever-increasing layers and ever-increasing brightness. It was huge fun. Even more fun afterwards was playing with the main work by cropping various areas of interest to make instant 'abstracts'. I've shown them below the main work. If you ever were clueless as to how to create a non-representational work, I've just shown you how. (Well one opportunistic method at least). I don't quite know what I am doing to do with it as it will take months to dry, probably even a year, which is a joke really as it is certainly not worth the effort of storing it. Now on to more demanding work even though I am not in the mood.

"Oil Tubes Festival"
Oil on Gessoed Board - 12" x 12"

Asparagus IV.

This is Number IV. I had left this one until the end as I thought it would be the most difficult but it wasn't. I enjoyed painting all those brilliant white highlights of the plastic wrap and these would have been rendered a with a lot more refinement had this work been on board and probably in a bigger format. I left out quite a lot, like the lettering on the bag which would have been fun to paint, and some of the more subtle graduations of colour. I have also put them all together below the photograph just so that I could see how they looked 'together'. That's when I just love the internet. They are together on my mantlepiece and somehow, sadly, in real life, don't 'hang together' as well as they do on this blog. Thinking about that one for a while....!

"Asparagus IV."
Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"

"Le Series"

Asparagus III.

Three down, and one more to go with the Asparagus series. I just wish I could paint during the day! I feel as though I am lagging behind; 'behind' what, I really don't know. This piecemeal daubing, a little here, a little there, is getting to me. I am enjoying learning about 'realism' during this series, (and calling it a 'series' is a bit over-the-top) but I still cannot mix the right greens. The actual asparagus, both in real life and in the perfect photograph were a slightly more milky green, which I just could not mix no matter how hard I tried. The fourth work is proving difficult although not quite as demanding as the greens are mostly in shadow. After this lot, I shall need a break, something splashy and expressive. I also think, no, I 'know' that this work would have been better painted on a panel. This canvas was ultra absorbent so there was a lot of overpainting and I found that for the finer details (and there were many) the surface was too grainy to control the brush as the subject demanded.

"Asparagus III"
Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"