Sometimes I can be in the mood to sit there for a few hours and mix the colours efficiently and correctly and apply them where theyre supposed to be. Especially if im painting my face then I need to pay attention where tonal difference is and where and how the colours merge.

So I resorted back to my old favourite Abstract painting!!
I think what the difference has been is that firstly, I am now exclusively using oil paint, and secondly I am painting over old paintings.

With the oil paint, the coloures are much stronger in terms of their pigmentation and the way it mixes. With Acrylic, mixing the paint made a muddy splurge of colour. With oil paint its all so smooth and nice

Painting over old paintings is very good for me because there is already a base for the colour to stand out on, and also there is already an underlying texture which the paint can skip over. I am very happy with the outcome of the last one, and also is working well on the new two.

Another excellent thing with oil also, is that it is making me take my time with my paintings and think about what i’m doing whilst im not at the studio.

Onto my portrait work,

I have working mainly on me, but due to my getting bored of the precision of portrait painting, I put my own spin on it.

With this one, I painted it as a sketch firstly, and then filled in the warm and cold tone. I also painted this painting in my own perspective. Its a large canvas so I painted it looking up the canvas.

I also painted a portrait of my friend Brendon using different colours, as I couldnt be bothered to use the correct colours.

This piece prompted comparisons with the Fauvists, which was quite interesting.

woo, things are moving.

With my abstract paintings, I used exclusively Acrylic paint, as it was very easy to apply, it dried very quickly and it was cheap to use so that I didnt feel guilty about throwing it about. Although its a bitch to get out of your clothes.

I started doing playing around with the construction of the human figure when I went on holiday in September. I was very pleased with the results as there was a definite progression throughout my sketch book in terms of the quality of the drawings and of the shapes and shades and realistic aspects of the human figures I was drawing.

When I got back to the studio, I decided to use some of these sketches as bases for paintings, but as I had never constructed a composition before out of figures, it was rubbish and just didnt take off at all.

This made my confidence in my sketches fall away quite quickly, so I started to do the thing which I knew most, I started to do an abstract painting, by just throwing paint around and seeing what happened. Which was the basis of three years of uni work and 2 years of post uni work. However, this abstract painting, I decided to use oil paint so that I could learn its properties within my realm of comfort.

This is what happened:

I am actually very happy with this piece, firstly because I destroyed a shit painting which I had done at uni, but this helped me understand oil paint quite significantly within a short period of time.

I do however, feel that it is not finished, and I am stuck in the rut of ‘what if’. What if I put black over the top, will it make it stronger or cover it. what if blah blah blah.

I think the best way is to print photos of it and sketch. That is what I shall do.

So this is my second attempt at a self portrait.

I feel this time I achieved a more realistic feel with the skin tone and my use of shading has improved also.

I did really struggle with all of the main sections, I struggled with the eyes, nose, mouth and hair. So pretty much every section was repainted a few times, but finally I got it right.

I am the type of person who learns mostly from the mistakes I make, so with this painting, I feel that I have learned more about the application of oil paint, and the mixture of colours and the use of light and dark. I also now know not to paint the background in a dark blue, as it swallows the paintings a bit too much.

My next step is to do another few, but this time I will move the mirror around the studio to paint so that I achieve different lighting and I will practice much more on the eyes and mouth shading as I feel those are my weakest points so far.

Andre Breton and Paul Eluard.

The poet and the creator. Not that a poet is not a creator, but a suggestion or a push given through the words written.

Words create colour and object in the mind and can be the god particle for an artists vision of work to be created.

Even two words put together can shoot off the nerves and create an image in the mind which the artist wished to transfer onto the canvas in his own vision.

I am a big fan of reading and I love books, although at the moment, I am reading books on Da Vinci’s note books, a book on Gerhard Richters doubt in paintings, a book on numbers that shape the universe and this morning I received a book about the Golden Ratio. These books will always be in my bag so that I can switch interests to suit my mood.

I feel that if I began to read poetry then I would get many ideas and mind based imagery.

Yes I enjoy making pile of books but I love books, they are the gateways into a different time scale of reality.

I had been struggling with oil paint as I was finding it difficult to move it around the canvas and also difficult to get the correct colours and shapes.

Another thing which impressed me was that yesterday, I managed to work on one canvas, a small one at that, for 4 hours solid. I enjoyed the fact that I was immersed in something and not just throwing paint at a large canvas. Although the latter is fun and can produce very interesting work, I want to take time and care with my work now. I want to gain skill in these areas.

Initially what has helped me when it comes to portrait painting is my understanding of the golden ratio. it has really helped me to understand proportion. It is now much simpler for me to construct a face using the law that the size of your forehead is the same as from the bridge of your nose to the base and then the same size again is from the base of the nose to the chin. Then again, the size size applies to the distance from your bridge of the nose to the left and right size of your cheek bones.

I feel that my understanding of oil paint has really excelled in this painting. It is the first time I have managed to create skin tone. But then again, it is the first time which I have sat down and spent time on a painting.

Its good.

I then went out and bought some Michael Harding oil paint as a treat.

Da Vinci was a scientist, philosopher, painter, thinker and inventor but to name a few of his hobbies. But to me, his relevance to me are his observations and calculations of the human form and vision.

I have still yet to full understand perspective and the proportions of human form, but Da Vinci is defiantly helping me through his works. i.e. the Vitruvian man, which demonstrates the golden ratio for the proportion of a human being, but also his figurative landscapes for example the Virgin on the rocks.

Notice the triangles in the figurative painting. The group of four figures, one triangle, the lines of sight make triangles, the hand gestures enforce the movement of the eye around the painting and make a narrative.

If you want to learn, learn from the best..

I have always done my drawings using the biro as a medium as I prefer it to pencil as the marks are stronger and harder, and I also like the fact that there is no chance to rub any marks out or change what has been marked.

I never really drew figures or had anything to do with figurative art at all before my latest challenge. I forged myself into an experimental abstract expressionist over the past 5 years due to not knowing how to draw people or paint figure etc.

I do have grudges still about the fact that I was never given any teaching or tutoring on how to form these skills, and it saddens me that the classical way of teaching painting is a dying art. Universities these days in my view and experience just leave students alone in the first year to see what they produce, then just try and harness it.

In my opinion, as a painter, painting has a enormous history and calibre about it, whereas installation and performance art just cant really compare.

I was told to ‘just paint’ at uni, which in some respects I resent, but in others, it made me who I am today, experimental and not precious about my work until I am pleased with the outcome. Its strange.

So moving on from abstract painting, I feel that I have come to the end of the road with that as I found myself repeating shapes and colours, and it just started to look boring and flat. Also I was exclusively painting with Acrylic paint which dries quickly and has a matte flat finish when dried.

So I decided to change and start to learn about two things which I knew not much about, and had pretty much no skill when working with them: Oil paint and Figurative painting.

Initially, I went to the National Gallery to study paintings of figures in oil. A very simple thing to do as in the past, there was no film installation, there was no performance art and there was no sound installation either. Just simple skill with a paint brush and different mediums used with skill and practice.

Initially I had to learn the way that the figures were placed on the canvas so that it would tell a story. Triangles are key.

Horizon points, light sources, eye lines, shading, the size of material which flows off the figures to bulk out the scene. But the shape of the triangle is key to the composition. The triangle instructs the eye to travel around the shape on all sides in both directions. From top to bottom, along the bottom, and then back up.

Next I moved onto the ‘The supper at Emmaus’ by Caravaggio

This painting shows the skill of Caravaggio, in that the viewer is presented to a confrontation at a dinner table and the gestures are powerful and meaningful.

Caravaggio however, has cheated. The light source is incorrect, also the sizes of the character on the rights right hand is way too large.

Perspective. This is my third challenge to understand and attempt to master. The right hand is way too large because it is there to emphasize the gesture towards the central character.

So perspective and form are my key things to learn.

A bad time however is that I received an email from Newbloodart.com informing me that they will be removing my page from their site. In a way, after letting it sink in, for oh, 10 minutes, I feel quite positive about it.

Although I wont be making sales by sitting on my arse anymore, I will have to put some work into it. I will have to enter competitions (which I have never done) and I will have to create enough work to attempt to put together a show.

Another good step is that I have begun collaborating with my good friend/fellow painter Chris Ward at our studio. He is a oil painter who uses mainly monochrome colours and paints very accurately with images from his family’s past. Me on the other hand, I am a colour and shape painter, I dont use images when I paint and I don’t usually have any images in mind when I hit the canvas.

Us getting together was an interesting prospect, and it turned out very well and was very easy for us to combine and create.

We ended up with this

I believe that collaborating can either bring out the best in artists, or it can ruffle feathers if disagreements occur. There can be additional selfishness and childishness by painting over sections that the other person did. But here thankfully that didn’t happen, we worked well and as we have worked next to eachother for 3 years at least, we have a strong level of trust when it comes to advise and improvements.

Back to my removal from New blood art. I did enjoy being a part of their growth, and seeing their status grow due to magazine and newspaper articles about them, but I do believe they began to represent me at a very early stage of my career, at a stage where I didnt and still dont have a definite style and message. My paintings vary drastically even when they are in the same type. My stroke ranges are growing in experience and my colour theory is a work in progress.

Im not surprised my sales didnt fly out the door, they were learning curves and experiments mainly. Also whenever I look at my old paintings which they had up for sale, I kind of cringed at the shittyness of some of them and wished to rework them or just completely paint over them.

Now I have that chance, I firstly feel like I have been dumped, as I have to go over to their office and pick up the three paintings they have of mine, but I then feel as if I secretly wanted the break up, as now I can rework and paint over those learning curves and baby steps of my painterly career.

For example:

This painting is shit. It was an experiment that went wrong, I was in a stage where I was trying to paint dark paintings and a stage where I was also experimenting with gloss and wall paint. I have no desire to keep this painting, I cant wait to paint over it. I actually laughed out loud when I recieved a email from New Blood Art saying that someone was interested in buying it. They obviously agreed with my view that its SHIT as they didnt buy it, and that is why I shall quite happily take it to the slaughter house/studio to have a nice new canvas to work on!

Secondly,

This is Shit. It is one layer and you can see most of the plain canvas underneath. The only reason it was deemed finished, was because I didnt have enough time at the end of UNI to complete it. It is a disaster, but creates a good base. I shall also take great joy in over painting this.

Onwards and upwards!! I shall create new works on old canvases, and put together a body and then begin my journey into the real artist world of London, rather than wait and hope that someone had clicked on my name and then pressed buy. That, in reality, is not a healthy way to start selling your work. Its great for pocket money, but it takes no effort and no pride into selling work. I want to see peoples reactions, I want a face to my work, to see the marks I have created, not a photoshoped recreation of it that has been highlighted and cropped.

Im going to bring out me into the world.