An old family relative

This was a commissioned gift from my uncle to my auntie. The man on the right is her father, he was a farmer up on the Glyn Mountain, which is near where I live, and that's his prize winning bull. The photo must have been taken around the nineteen fifties.

The undercoat of every painting I do is really just a scribbled mess, but it's very useful. It stops me getting too precious about the process. It shows where the light and dark sections are, and also creates a nice thick layer of paint for the top layer to sit on, making it nice and shiny. Acrylic paint which is too thin just looks dry and chalky.

As if by magic a finished painting emerges. I like taking photos of the painting in progress, because it's so easy to forget the stages that you have to go through to get there.

Seeing the original photo and the photo of the painting side by side I can see now that the bulls forehead is a too high, but it's easy to change that with acrylics because they dry so quickly.

I purposefully wanted a balance between sketchiness and detail, so the hands are just blobs, but making sure the planes of the face are in the right place is really important. The sketchiness of the background and his clothes acts as a nice balance for the detail in the face.

Mini Gallery

These are the paintings in the shop at the moment (hopefully they'll have found a happy home by Christmas!). It was nice seeing them grouped together like this. The daughter of the owner came up with the idea of making a triptych, three separate paintings that will be displayed and sold together, which is a really good idea. It was from seeing the two beach paintings above displayed side by side, as they do look as though they're part of the same landscape.

The little boy watching the sail boat is called "Sailer Boy," he's so cute, and I've also done a variation on the snow painting. I think that's my favourite at the moment, we're almost drowning in the stuff here! Lots more photos and paintings to come on this snowy theme hopefully.

Playing in the Snow

Another painting of my children playing in the snow. See if you can spot the mistake!.......................

(I forgot the string on the sleigh! It's now been sold, with a string added, had to go back to the shop with my paint box to add it. Doh.)

Boys on the Beach

Enough red for now, sticking to a turquoise theme, which gives a fresh summery feel. The two boys almost look like the same figure taken in two different positions but are actually two different boys.

I'm going to use this photo again, which also includes one other figure on the right hand side, in a larger black and white version.

Children in the Snow

This was without doubt the hardest painting for me to part with as they are both my children and the photo was taken recently in the heavy snowfall. It sold within two days though so I know it's gone to a happy home!

I used really thick paint as an undercoat which enabled me to create interesting textures for the snowy areas when dragging the fresh paint on top of it. The blue shadows really adds to the wintery feel and the red contrasts perfectly with it. I used Windsor Blue for the shadows as it's got a turquoise hint to it which sings nicely and prevents it from getting too flat.

Building a Sandcastle, Tenby Beach

This is of my daughter playing on the beach, taken at Tenby South Wales. There's much greater tonal contrast between this one and the previous one of my son on the beach, the shadows here are much stronger, which makes for quite a striking image. The deep purple and red contrasts nicely with the yellow sand, but I think my favourite bit is the cliffs and reflections in the background.

Building a Sandcastle

A much lighter painting this time, with summery colours. This is my little boy digging in the sand, most of the other photos I use are very kindly given to me by a friend of mine. In a way this makes things easier for me to sell them because the ones featuring my own children are that much harder to part with!

The photo this painting was based on was taken on Tenby beach in West Wales.