A Collection Of Recent Work

Hi there,

I've not done a blog post in quite a while, and there isn't going to be much writing in this one either, I just want to post up some work so that people who don't use Facebook will be able to view it.

Streedagh Sundown

                                                                 Three Colours Blue

                                                                        Five-A-Day

                                                                   Benbulbin Sunrise

             
                                                                    Flower Study

                                                                   Furchetta Peak

Still Life

I've been working on a still-life for about the last two weeks, or about 15 hours all together, from a photo i took in the kitchen, happy enough with the end product tho could always be sharper and more aligned. But it all comes down to time. Also my handwriting has always been really bad so the text on the objects ain't too good. But on the plus side i do like the way the glass on the, things made of glass, looks. If that makes sense. I think it does. Loads of ideas for still-life things, some more difficult than others. I started a new one today which i like gonna put the sketch up too, hope ya'll maybe like a little bit?

Ps, click on the images to see them a bit sharper...

Much ado about drawing

Continuing on from my last blog, here are some more quick drawings that i've done over the last week or two:

I'm posting them in roughly the order in which i painted them.

This week i shall be mostly doing quick sketches

Having gotten fed up with taking half a life-time to paint a basic picture i decided to knock out a few short sketch pieces, for practice really, as a way to get a capture of something pretty fast. Most of these took about an hour, tho really they took about 20 minutes each, cause i do pause constantly to check important things on the internet,  like for example: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6089/the-art-of-fiction-no-211-william-gibson which is a really good interview with william gibson. Enjoy!!

Oh yeah, here are the pictures...

'M+M's'

'Blocks'

'Hmmmm'

'F**king hell it's hot!!'

'I am not just a duck!!'

'Audio'

'Limone'

It's London, isn't it?

Oh bloody hell i had a full blog written there and i've f#*king lost it!! AAAAGGGGHHH!!

Right i'm not going to write it out again (it wasnt very good anyway). Here's a pretty picture i painted of London in the fog, from a photo i took last november from Hampstead Heath looking towards the City. I really like the look of Tower Blocks but had never painted one, and i'm so f*@king slow i reckon they could build them quicker than i painted this one!! Lot's of stuff wrong with this piece but i is finished with it. Hope anybody likes it...?

'When do you think his commitment waned?'

Well i just finished a piece last night that i've been working on for i don't know how long. I'm trying to train myself to stick with what i started and not leave pieces half finished. So far i think i'm succeeding. Am i learning anything tho? Patience maybe... But it nearly drove me mad in the end! The hair took so long that i might not have put as much effort into the last section as i did in the earlier parts, hence the title to this post: 'When do you think his commitment waned?'. As any Father Ted fan can answer, 'towards the end' of course!!

Seeing it posted here makes it look a bit starker than it looks on the wacom monitor... but it will have to do!! Heres a link to the reference pic used from deviantart.com http://misstopazz.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4bu0s0

Next week i think i'm gonna spend time doing quick sketches, before i knuckle down and do another long piece. May or may not post the results, may or may not actually do the sketches! Cause it's going to be a mental week in my 'other reality' ie my day-job. I expect there to be a lot of screaming and shouting tomorrow morning on the floor.. 

Since i last posted i was in London in merry old England to see a few friends and relatives and also to go see this great exhibition in the Tate Modern: Gerhard Richter, Panorama http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gerhardrichter/default.shtm Really, really great works here and i would recommend anybody going to visit London in the next while to give it a look, the 'realist' works on display are particularly interesting (for me anyway, i like abstract work too but wasn't too taken with some of his abstract work). He calls it 'Capitalist Realism' which i think is a great way to describe it! 

Anywho, was trying to find a link there to the Father Ted episode i was alluding to, it's called 'And god created woman', it's the one where he meets a novel writer who is going to become a nun, 'Best of luck with the book' and all that. But youtube wont allow me to watch it without setting up a seperate channel so i can watch it on 4od or some such malarky so i'm not going through all that nonsense. 

Comments always welcome...

Non-Abandoned Work

Yay i've (more or less) finished a new piece!! Took a while tho...

There's still probably a little bit of work left in it but i gonna let it rest for a bit. I'll do a longer blog on it in a day or two but for now just wanted to throw it up there. 

Abandoned Work

I've just realised that i've lined this work up wrong! The houses on the left are supposed to be higher up than the ones on the right... Kind of annoyed. But i get so bored with measuring out where things should be that i always jump into things without making sure all is correct... Got to stop cutting corners!! Anyway here it is:

I think i was being a bit ambitious with it tho, i should maybe draw some individual houses etc and not a whole scene. 

Blue landscapes

Often times i tend to paint pictures based on somebody else's photos, so i went looking thru my holiday snaps to see if i could find some inspiration from some of my photos, and lo and behold it turns out that Italy is 'inspiring'.! I know, who'd of thunk it? So i painted this one of the mountains across Lake Garda looking west from Malcesine i think, or maybe it was a bit further to the south... Anyway, we stopped for Michelle and Dara to have a swim in the lake and i read my book on swarm intelligence and took a few photos and enjoyed the  evening sunshine. Sun-starved Irish people need as much sun as they can get!! 

It's not 100% accurate but it's more painted to convey a mood. The style is also new to me, a little less focused on 'realism' and a bit softer too. And painted pretty fast as well, over two nights or three. Also i don't recall painting a landscape before either. Or at least one that looks like the thing that it's supposed to look like anyway.

Motivation

I'm trying to get back into painting again after a lull during the summer. Summer was hectic really, work does go mad busy, and we went on a great holiday too, to Lake Garda, which was just fantastic. But now it's back to school time again, and i want to get painting but just can't seem to find the motivation.

So in the meantime i'm gonna post up a few bits that i've done in the recent past, mostly unfinished practice stuff, with a brief explanation.

This one is called 'Plastic Trouble', i can't remember why now. It was nearly the very last of a series of abstract circle based pieces i was doing around May/June of 2011. Some of the earlier pieces i've uploaded here already. The backround colour started as black and gradually got lighter as i went along.

Ha, this one is called 'Plastic Furbie', i think because i was watching or listening to something about how the Furbie toy mimics intelligence and 'learns' or mimics learning. It's nearly the last piece of the circles, looking at it now i'm not sure if i like it or not, one second it looks great, the next second it looks like pepperoni slices falling from the sky...

This is called 'Plastic Fade', and i like this one, tho it is the end of the series. Perhaps i'll go back this direction, they are very enjoyable to create, and look at too maybe?

Well the title on this one is 'Metalseries no smoking text', catchy eh? Anyway it is the text on a piece of a metal sign at a filling station warning people not to smoke etc.

The text above is to be written on this sign. At the time i was looking a lot at metal and rusting metal and signs and things like that. This is unfinished, and is really, looking at it now, not much more than a colour sketch.

'Wings'. This isn't quite finished either, it's a 'study' (hate that term) of the remains of a seagull i think, that i took a photo of down on Streedagh headland. I put it on a black backround, and i like the look of this one, abstract but solid.

It's funny, the name i have on this one is 'Kabuki-Style Sketch', and i think i called it that because i was trying to mimic the David Mack pen-and-ink style he sometimes does. But of course i'm really terrible at that kind of thing and i always end up doing tonnes of detail, hence it takes me bloody ages to get anything done!! And also i end up with a lot of unfinished bits...

Like this one, 'Practice Face'. The mouth and chin clearly need a lot of work, as does the hair and in fact the whole thing!! So i don't know where to re-start this autumn, a new piece (suggestions please), or tip away on something unfinished to get me moving? Answers on a postcard to tomnipresent... Your feedback is much appreciated.

4 new pieces

Have a few more abstract pieces here, not sure about titles yet but i'm sure something will spring to mind! Lovely evening here, sun is shining and the weather people say it's gonna be hot later in the week. 'Hot' meaning 20degrees C....

I might call this one 'Pigs In Spaaaaaccccceeee' 'cause they look a bit like cute little piggys... i think.

More cosmic bubbles in space

I was trying to DIY block mount today... Not the easiest thing in the world to do i might add. The results were mixed to say the least, tho i do remember back to the first printed canvas i stretched, that was pretty pretty bad! The trick is getting the mdf cut straight, then orienting the print onto it, well, duh!! Anyway the reason i'm looking at this angle is cause the abstract stuff i'm doing right now is fairly sharp looking, so a canvas print will deaden that sharpness, a high gloss print is whats needed. But there is no way in hell, (hell, i tell you) that i can afford to get stuff professionally block mounted. So it's gotta be DIY. So maybe if i start out on some small prints and get them right, then i can maybe get a large sheet of mdf cut professionally, like A3plus or even A2 or go totally mental and get an A1 cut, then print a massive photo print and paste it on, i think it would look pretty pretty pretty good!!

Here's the two latest psychedelic freak-outs:

Being driven to 'Abstraction'

Hit a bit of a wall painting what was on front of me, so i started spacing out and drawing circles, which i love doing. Then i tried to mess a little bit with perspective, remembering some lessons from Piet Mondrian, trying to confuse myself, is the canvas a surface or is it '3-dimensional'. So here are 3 experiments:

I'm thinking of something like 'Plastivs' or 'Plcastivs' or something like that for titles...

Cracking up...

I've finished the garlic more or less, my mind has been slightly elsewhere, and i've been trying to book a holiday for the summer. Listening to Stereolab now, 'jenny ondioline' from 1993, class band!! So here's my garlic sitting a-top 'Orbital' (Brown)...

garlic wip

heres what ive been working on today...

Intensive wip

Found it a bit slow getting back into painting after the easter break, so this one is kind of finished, tho it could do with a bit of a touch up here and there, and i could even add in more text, but i might leave it.

And here is the WIP 

Not sure how the wip is gonna look, but sure you get the idea!!