‘Monkey’s wedding’ …

Hey, I hope all of you who celebrate Christmas have a joyous one, filled with everything you need – like happiness, love, family and good friends.

Christmas is not about the gifts, or the tree or the baubles and garish lights festooning so many houses at this time of year but you wouldn’t think otherwise if you visited this planet from somewhere else.    As an extra-terrestrial, I wonder if you’d find it all a bit strange when you look around, peer into the crack and see all those many lost people?   The people who don’t have anyone to spend the holidays with, the people who are lonely or just alone in a crowd, the people who don’t have any food or place to live and there are many homeless people in this country and all over the world – what a sin that is!  In this so-called age of enlightenment, that there are still so many people who have nowhere to live, no prospects, no food, relying on hand outs and hand-me-downs just to keep body and soul together.  I wonder if your extra-terrestrial self would stop and think about that while you imbibe the ‘Christmas cheer’ and tuck into the turkey.

I’m not preaching, I’m as guilty as the next when it comes to over-indulging – both in the food and drink and the gift buying.  I just hope that the people in my family who have had a right crap year, manage to glean happiness and warmth over this holiday season – we’ll be seeing one of them on Boxing Day.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A GREAT NEW YEAR CELEBRATION

I hope 2019 is a great year for you all.

‘Monkey’s Wedding’

A4.  Water-soluble oil pastels on Bockingford watercolour paper.

New this week – ‘Gold’

We are settling into our new home and I’m beginning to find more space and time to paint.  This week I completed two pieces, this is the first to get up on a wall:

Image cropped :

“Gold”

Acrylics, sand texture, gels and inks on stretched canvas.

Size:  70cm x 60cm x 2cm (approx)  or 27½” x  23½” x 1″

 

New mixed media

Quite some time ago I started working on a series of paintings relating to the South African landscape, for some reason I didn’t finish that work.  I decided to go back to one of them over the weekend and this is the result, might still do a bit more tweaking (as always!).  This area holds a very special place in my heart (and psyche).  It is one of the most beautiful parts of the world, glorious in any weather.  This is a view of the ampitheatre from the river below. (My own reference photos)

For this one I used acrylic inks, soft pastels, then oil pastels on mixed media paper.  Paper size is 16.5″ x 11.5″ (A3), painting takes up all surface of the paper.

 

Commission – completed

The brief I was given from my client was to paint her a picture of her field, which lies behind her offices and home in a rural area of South Norfolk.  She wanted a representation of the field in winter and depending on how that went, would probably ask me to do another painting of the field in summer.   The field or meadow doesn’t have any major features in it, other than a small coppice of trees and a separate area for her rescued chickens.   I knew that she didn’t want me to include the chickens in the finished painting, so I couldn’t mess about with that idea, which was actually what I wanted to do!  Chickens make excellent subjects for paintings!

I did have a few issues with the process of painting the required picture and had several different ideas of how to approach it.  So, I decided to present her with three versions last Friday and let her decide which one or ones she wanted to keep.

The first one is a realism approach taken from a photograph.  I wanted to capture the wintery light and bare branches, the grass was still quite luminous and deeply green.  This is on stretched canvas – 19″ x 16″.  Acrylics over inks.

 

The second painting was more like the kind of style I enjoy doing, especially when it comes to depictions of trees.  Also on stretched canvas, same size (19″ x 16″) but portrait style.   I used an acrylic ink underpainting, topping it off with oil pastels and oil paints.

 

The third painting was totally abstract and processed using gels, inks and acrylic paint on an artist canvas board.  This is about twice the size of the stretched canvas paintings.  I forgot to take a photo with my Canon before I took them to the client, and only have this mobile phone photo.

My client was so thrilled with all the paintings that she’s decided she wants all of them!  She is going to get them professionaly framed and then I will return to her home and take photos of these paintings in frames.  I am overjoyed that she really liked all the work, her husband especially liked the middle painting.  She has also decided to feature the paintings in prominent areas of her home – originally she was only going to place the paintings against a wall in one of the corridors leading into her house.

New oil pastels painting

Golden glade – watersoluble oil pastels and inks

‘Summer Glade’

Oil pastels, oil paints and ink on A3 paper.

(pictures on right, to show detail)

I was going for a loose feel with this one, the underpainting seems to set it all off sparkling.

New small painting

‘Little Field’

Acrylic inks, oil bars and oil paints on gesso-ed multi_media paper.

This small painting is available to purchase here

I am using this post to test out connection to my existing blog community on WordPress.  I am not certain that my website is visible to you all and I’d appreciate comment if you can or can’t see the website via this post.

My website address is:  http://www.janiceheatherscott.com

 

Oil Bars

Apologies for such a long time in posting any arty updates – been lots of family things to sort out lately, I’m quite exhausted by all of that, so let’s get on with it hey?

I discovered Winsor & Newton Oil Bars quite by accident and only have a small selection at this stage.  But boy am I enjoying this new found freedom.  I am still doing fiddly small things while I get used to manipulating the oil bars on different surfaces.  These are some of the more recent things I did over the weekend.

 

‘Patchwork landscape with blue’

14.5″ x 10″ or 37cm x 25cm – actual painting size.

Acrylic inks, oil bars and oil paints on acrylic art pad.

Surface worked with sgraffito technique

 

‘Poppy field’

9.5″ x 6.5″ or 24.5cm x 16 cm

Acrylic inks, Oil bars and oil paints on Daler Rowney acrylic paper

Surface worked with sgraffito technique

 

‘Poppy field with buildings’

7″ x 5″ or 18cm x 12cm

Acrylic inks, oil bars and oil paint on mixed media paper.

Surface worked with sgraffito technique

I am also working on a largre canvas piece, as well as a larger landscape piece but these aren’t ready to put up here yet.

Hope you enjoy!

New soft pastel work

“Woodland Light”

14 ¼” x 10 ¼”  Soft pastels on paper

 

Footnote:    I got hold of this with the Galeria gloss medium – the idea was to see if this medium would be compatible and protect the pastels better than a fixative spray.   What seems to have happened is the tones have darkened – the painting is still interesting, I think and perhaps more atmospheric.  I have matted and mounted it behind cellophane – photo just to show difference in tonality.