Aslan - Finished!

Aslan is now finished (at least for now). I’m quite chuffed with how this looks so I’ve popped it on my wall so that I can live with it for a while.


The only thing I’m not sure about is how to finish the edges. I started off trying the continue the painting around them but I’m finding it really fiddly. Any suggestions?

Aslan – Another Work In Progress

I’m very nearly done with this one now. I want to touch up the teeth and tone down the pinkness of the mouth but other than that I think I’m just about happy. The fur is looking more defined now and I’m reasonable happy with the way it turned out particularly as this is the first time I’ve tackled fur in oil.


I’ll try to get Aslan finished tomorrow.

Aslan – Further Work In Progress

I’ve started getting the fur tone into Aslan now. I’ve got a long way to go but the main is taking shape and I’ve got the fur direction into the face. I’m going to give it a day or so to dry then I’m going to put finer detail in the main and I’ll try stabbing the individual hairs on the face… I will probably regret this decision but if you don’t try you don’t know.

I think my ability to mix colours is starting to improve by pure fluke!

Aslan – Work In Progress

This painting’s really coming along now. I’ve got Aslan’s base coat on, I’ll give it a day or two to dry then I’ll go over it to give the fur depth.

I’m still struggling to mix colours, I’ve tried reading about colour theory but I have to admit that it’s all completely over my head. Typical, I can understand algebra but ask me to mix a colour and I’m lost.

Aslan – Another Work In Progress

Another day, another Aslan update. I’ve started work on the lion now but I’m starting to struggle with the loss of light. Autumn is definitely here!

Aslan – More Work in Progress

Another day spent being frustrated with paint. I absolutely hate drawing buildings, that probably means I should practice more but there’s something about bricks and mortar that completely switches me off. That being said I spent today’s painting session working on Cair Paravel in the background of my Aslan picture. It’s no where near finished yet but compared to my usual building painting level it’s positively brilliant. Tomorrow in between building flat packed furniture for my mom (what a good daughter I am) and doing the hoovering I’m hoping to add some more detail to Cair Paraveland work on the grass.

I also had my first major paint related catastrophe today when I managed to tip half the content of my new brush cleaning jar which is full of thinners all down my top! Luckily I was in the kitchen, I think I would have cried if it had fallen on the carpet… I probably shouldn’t be aloud to play with things that can cause damage to my house.

Completely unrelated but I finished reading The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullmen. I usually I get a lot of inspiration from the books I read but although this book had a really good plot idea it was otherwise absolutely awful! Oh well, The Constant Princess by Philipa Gregory is next. It’s a fantasy about Katherine of Aragon so I’m really looking forward to more Tudor goodness.

Aslan – Work in Progress

I’ve finally started painting again. This is going to be a colour copy of my Aslan sketch, I’ve got some base colour down and I want to get the background finished before tackling the lion.

In my previous 2 paintings I’ve used water mixable oils with water as the medium but this time I’ve started using liquin. From all I’d read I thought working with liquin wouldn’t make much difference but I was wrong. It makes the paint move completely different. For want of a better term it seems to make the paint feel slimy. I think I prefer it.

Goodrich Castle - Complete

Goodrich Castle

Oil on Canvas

I’ve finally finished my first oil landscape. I found this painting very challenging and like everything else I’m working on it has been a steep learning curve. I’m particularly happy with the highlights on the tree bark which came out very well but I think next time I will reconsider using such a dark underpainting when the painting was intended to be very light. It made it quite difficult preventing the colours from becoming muddy. I will also look into some different techniques for giving the illusion of leaves.

Goodrich Castle – Work in Progress

Today I decided I would start my second voyage into the world of oil painting. After much deliberation I decided that I would try to paint this photo taken outside Goodrich Castle last autumn. I was very hung over at the time, having spent the previous night at a party in the village hall however even in my stupor I could appreciate the wonderful colours all around me.

I started the painting by blocking in the darker tones. I then stood back and noticed that the arch was a little crooked but that would be easy to fix.

Next I blocked in the basic tree shapes. At this point I took a chair over to the other side of the room and just sat for a while, partly because I suddenly didn’t have a clue what to do next but also because I wanted a yoghurt.

Once my snack was all gone and I had resigned myself to the fact that I had to do something and it would either work order it wouldn’t I started adding the foliage. At first I was very unhappy with the result but it seemed that the more I worked into the foliage the more the shapes and colours were starting to appear. I was however having issues with working wet on wet and I was concerned that the colours were starting to look muddy. As I had all but run out of white I took that as the universes way of telling me to stop now and come back to it latter. I added a few defining highlights to the remaining trees and then popped my pallet in the freezer.

I will be continuing tomorrow once the paint is a little dryer.

Elegance 3 – Complete

I’ve finally completed my first oil painting and I’m rather happy. Sure it’s not perfect but then the day I think that my work is perfect is probably the day I should stop being an artist. It’s the feeling that my work could have been better that always encourages me to strive to improve.

The thing that I like most about this painting is the hair. I’ve decided that hair is much more fun when you’re painting in oils! I’m also happy with the way the kanzashi turned out. I’ve got a few issues with the layout of the face but I think these may be the result of working from memory instead of a model/photo. I’ve learnt a lot about the importance of planning out your work while creating this painting.

As my intention is for this painting to be displayed without a frame I have finished by painting the 1” deep canvas edge. It was only after I had done this that I realised I don’t have anywhere other than my easel to leave it to dry! D’oh! Oh well, at least I’ll have plenty of time to plan my next piece.
Elegance 3 was created in oil on canvas.

Elegance 3 – Work In Progress

This week I’ve been back to the drawing board with my first Geisha painting. I still wasn’t happy with my second Gouache attempt so I decided to give oils a go. As this is my first ever oil painting I began by spending a lot of time online looking up tutorials and tips from other artists and watching instructional videos and speed painting demos on Youtube. Once I was relatively comfortable that I at least knew one end of a paint tube from the other I popped down to my local art store where they happily made my wallet lighter in return for paints, canvas and assorted bits and bobs that I could have probably lived without.

For my first oil painting I chose to use good quality water mixable oils. This choice was for two reasons. Firstly as I have never used oils before I felt more comfortable with the idea of using water and secondly I paint very close to my rattys (they like to watch what I’m up to) and I didn’t want to upset their delicate lungs by exposing them to strong smelling chemicals.
I have since got my hands on some low odour thinners and am confident that I will be able to use this in future without upsetting the rodents!

So, I started my painting bearing in mind what I had learned from my two previous attempts in gouache. I created a light oil sketch on the canvas planning out a rough outline and the areas of deep shade. I wasn’t going for any great detail at this point but I did learn latter on that taking a little more time to plan at this stage may have saved me effort latter.


Next I filled in the basic colour. I was very excited by the way the hair looked. I had always avoided using black when working in gouache and watercolour but decided to throw caution to the wind with this paining and the result was fantastic.
I did noticed at this point that the face was slightly the wrong shape but I decided to correct that latter. Next time I will refrain from filling in all the background in the beginning unless there’s something interesting going on in it as latter I realised it would have been nice to be able to rest my hand on the clean canvas, I was still in a gouache frame of mind and didn’t realise just how long the oil would take to dry. Looking back I also could have laid the paint a little thinner at this point, another lesson that I will be able to bear in mind for my next painting.


Now that I had the basic colours down I could concentrate on getting the tones into the face. This was a real struggle for me as I discovered that in oil mixing perfect colour is far more important and far trickier than in gouache and watercolour. In water based mediums you can get the basic colour and then change the depth depending on how thickly you lat the paint, with oils I quickly discovered that although you can blend colours far easier, the shade you mix is the shade you get. For the first time in my life all the lessons about colour theory at college seemed to make sense… I really wish I had paid more attention to them!

Disaster! At this point I was about an inch away from throwing the painting out of the window and curling up in a corner. Having got the rough tone in the face I added the red lips which were just plain wrong and the eyes which look more like hieroglyphic eyes than anything else. I also attempted to add a couple of highlights to the hair and accidentally ended up with a huge grey smudge in the middle of her head… I decided it was time to go away and come back to the painting latter.

Recovery! After a bar of chocolate and a nap I came back determined to make my geisha look human again. Here is where I learnt for the first time just how forgiving oil is as a medium. I soon had the badger stripe covered, the eyes looking more eye like and the mouth less skewiff. I was even able to improve the facial tone a little. Nervous breakdown averted.

Next I spent some time adding more tone and detail to the face to make it look far more 3D. I also altered the shape of the face a little and started blocking in the darker colour on the metal hair ornament.
The next job would be to paint in the kanzashi but at this point I realised that I needed one of those long sticks with a pad on the end, the name of which alludes me right now. Instead of heading out to the shops I decided that I could make one easily enough using things in the house so I headed off to the cupboard and found a new kitchen sponge, some spare fabric, a piece of ribbon and an arrow that I broke while roving. Ten minutes latter and hey-presto! My very own stick thingie complete with arrow fletchings.

Another hour and the kanzashi is starting to take shape and I’m now getting the hang of how much paint I need to use for what. From hating this paining and wanting to throw it out of the window I’m now quite proud that I’ve done so well on my first attempt in the medium particularly as I’m working nearly entirely from imagination. I’ve broken the back of the majority of the painting and just have the finer details to add. I’ve started thinking about the background and I think that I need to put some sort of detail on it, as if my geisha is standing in front of a curtain or screen. I’ll need to have a think, if the past week has taught me anything it’s that planning saves a lot of stress!

Finished painting to follow soon.