London City Bank Area In Sunny Autumn - WIP stages

London City Bank Area In Sunny Autumn - WIP stages

WIP on London financial district oil painting

The picture above shows development work of the painting 'London City Bank Area In Sunny Autumn'. It measures 60” x 40” and is painted in oils on canvas. The first panel shows the drawing, done in brown acrylic on a brown wash. White areas have been added to illustrate the intended areas of brightness, such as the sky. Darker tones are added using a brown wash built up in layers. The second panel now shows the underpainting of the scene, done ias a wash in oils. No detail is added at this stage and the colours are of a slightly darker tone than what would be the final colour. In the third panel detail and more colour is added to the overall painting, with the colour paint becoming more thicker in the way it is applied and truer to the final required tone. Finally the forth panel shows the completed oil painting of this busy scene, set in the heart of the financial district of the city of London.

The completed artwork can be seen on this link.

London City Bank Area In Sunny Autumn - oil painting

London City Bank Area In Sunny Autumn - oil painting

Oil painting of a busy autumn day at Bank, London.

'Bank' is an area of London situated in the financial heart of the city. This painting features a number of famous buildings of different ages. Dominating the scene is the Royal Exchange, while on the left is the Bank of England. In the background can be seen the tower 42 (Natwest) and the Scapel. In typical London fashion the streets are littered by plenty of red buses at this busy junction.

This painting is quite large, measuring 60” x 40” and is painted in oils on canvas. Work on it was completed during very late December 2018.

The london landscape painting can be viewed in greater detail on this link.

Working on closeup 56

Working on closeup 56

A snippet of a London street based oil painting...

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 03

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 03

The project is to create three painted pig 'sculptures' as part of a street art/ trail project for the City of Gloucester, UK. The trail will be open to the public during the summer months of 2017 and then auctioned off for the benefit of several charities. Further details can be found here.

'Piggy bank' with painting almost completed

Work has continued to finishing off the 'Piggy Bank' pig and tidying up details. The pink coat of paint, a premixed 'Reeves' paint colour has worked well straight out of the pot. Originally I had thought about mixing it using other paints but in this case it worked well, as did the 'metal' paints used on the coins, again from Reeves. The black lining is a Daler Rowney system 3 heavy pigment paint. Now I was able to return my attention to the 'Floating Floyd' pig, based on the 'Animals' cover by the band Pink Floyd. This uses more colours than the other pig and some are premixed paint, and some mixed paint by myself. The pigs/ designs give the impression that is is just an application of one simple colour. However it is quite common to have to paint several layers (brush painting) to get a dense enough colour but unfortunately sometimes the colours are not flat, even after several coats, in particular when using ones own mixed paint. So I have found myself having to slightly change colours, using purchased mixed paint to an approximate shade, to get over this problem but I don't think that it would detract to much from the intended design.

Large cartoon pig design closeup

Battersea power station on rear

'Floating Floyd' under progress with the finished 'Piggy bank' to rear

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 02

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 02

  The project is to create three painted pig 'sculptures' as part of a street art/ trail project for the City of Gloucester, UK. The trail will be open to the public during the summer months of 2017 and then auctioned off for the benefit of several charities. Further details can be found here.

The first image shows the pigs after delivery and placed in the work space. I will initially work on one design (Piggy Bank) with some work on the second (Floating Floyd), just to have something to work on while awaiting paint to dry on the first. The third will be left as is for a short while. The designs can be seen in an earlier post here.
The first process is to pencil out the design, using my 2D designs created in Photoshop, as a good guide to placement of the elements on to the 3 dimensional form of the pigs. Once all the elements of the design fit satisfactorily on the sculpture, I then tidy up the drawings, following which I mask parts of the design using masking tape, the reason being it helps to make painting sections easier, in this case the coins and lettering are masked out so as to make applying the pigs, pink base colour, easier to do.

Masking tape on some areas of the pig

From then on it is a case of straight forward painting each section across the sculpture, using acrylic paint, though it should be noted that all the painted areas typically needs 2-3 coats of paint for a full bodied colour, meaning that each sculpture is painted a number of times. For the painting of the coins originally I was going to use ordinary yellow/ gray colours but then came across the 'metallic' acrylic paint in a shop and thought that would make a nice addition to the paintwork.

'Piggy Bank' and 'Floating Floyd' at the beginning of painting

Metallic paint added for the coins on 'Piggy Bank'

Rear of  'Piggy Bank'

'Piggy Bank' coin painted

 

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 01

Henson Pig Trail 2017 Gloucester blog 01 

I am to start very shortly on painting 3 pig sculptures. These will eventually join a number of others, also painted by artists, on a trail in the town Gloucester and surrounding area. The trail is called 'Old Spots Sculpture Trail, and is based on an old Spots pig named Henson. The trail runs from June to August 2017 after which the pigs are auctioned off for charitable causes. Further information can be found here.

I have 3 designs intended for the trail. The following images show the designs, drawn in Photoshop, of them from different angles. The designs were create and submitted during late Autumn 2016. 

The first one is known as Piggy Bank.

The second one is known as 'Floating Floyd'

The final one is known as 'Pigs May Fly'

The pigs are hollow and stand 1m tall approx, and will be painted by hand using acrylics.