After last week’s somewhat rampant start to the Artists Open Houses (in terms of sales that is!) – the 2nd weekend has been much more sedate. A lot more visitors, matched ironically by far fewer sales. Never the less, having started off last week by displaying the paintings that I’ve sold I feel somehow beholden to… Read More
With only nine days to go until the opening of our Park Gate Collective artists open house things are beginning to come together. The weekend was largely spent cutting yet more mounts, getting frames ready and whitewashing walls. I took the measurements for ‘my’ wall and did a quick 1:100 scale mock-up of the space and… Read More
Longer term followers may recall that last year I dipped my toe into Brighton’s annual Artists Open Houses bonanza. The Open Houses coincide with Brighton’s main arts festival and the Brighton Fringe Festival – both of which are the largest of their kind in England. The Artists Open Houses run each weekend in May and… Read More
And so to London for the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour Exhibition at the Mall Galleries. It was the opening weekend and, by the time I got there, already thronging with visitors. My visit also coincided with a demonstration by David Poxon RI and it was a real treat to punctuate my viewing of… Read More
On the weekend that the clocks here in the UK leapt forward an hour – extending the days and enabling me to put my bike lights into storage until the autumn – it seemed only appropriate to celebrate the extra daylight with some especially daylight filled watercolours: I’ve painted this view before a few times… Read More
Although I’ve finished my plein-air DIY watercolour project that I previewed last week, I’d really like to you to be able to see it ‘in action’ so I’m going to wait for some more clement weather before I photograph it. In the meantime though, as I couldn’t wait to try out my new set up, here… Read More
I was wary of returning to the scene of one of my favourite paintings of late, but I hoped that a different composition combined with everything I’ve learnt and experienced since, would be sufficient to make it a worthwhile exercise. As a reminder, here’s my painting of a sunlit café in a Barcelona side street,… Read More
I felt increasingly disappointed about my most recent efforts after posting last week’s blog post. I did, however, receive some well-considered, constructive and encouraging comments that really stuck with me. Initially, all I wanted to do was to move on and forget this subject. The more I mulled over the comments I’d received though, the more… Read More
One of the great things I enjoy about watercolour painting is, with practice, being able to see demonstrable progress and improvement. This, combined with maintaining this brushes with watercolour blog, means that I have a ready means of being able to trawl through my archives to look back on and chart or reflect on my… Read More
After last week’s effort, I was keen to tackle the same view again but to iron out some of the creases while replicating all of my favourite elements: My main aim was to introduce a little more subtlety, in particular to the buildings on the right. When I started to draw this out again, I… Read More
