1. Journey - oil on canvas  40x50cm - £100-200

2. Aaiyyan - oil on box canvas  40x50cm £100-200

3. Birth - oil on canvas  20x20cm £50-100

 4. Bratz - oil on canvas 30x40cm £100-200

Now I worked on the face and arms, using various shades - burnt sienna, yellow ochre, raw umber - the usual colours. I was also using chinese white and got a new tablet of titanium white to get a more opaque feeling. I basically wanted the painting to have more substance than the usual traditional watercolour techniques allow.

So I did some more work on the painting after a very black phase. After a month of lounging around I did some more work on the T-Shirt. At this point I started using a mixture of dammar varnish, egg yolk and gum arabic. I wanted to achieve a more opaque look - which I would then paint over using transparent layers of watercolour and gum arabic and slow drying water colour medium (windsor and newton again). The dammar varnish was from Daley Rowney.

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Ok, before I started painting in oil, I decided to do a quick watercolour sketch. I was using heavy Cotman watercolour paper (A3 size) and a Kolinsky sable brush. I was using a Windsor and Newton pan set of watercolours. I also had a small plastic cup filled with water and a small dose of Gum Arabic (by Windsor and Newton again) to give the colour a glossier look - and to control the flow. (Later on I'll probably try some water colour blending medium).

Basically this was just a sketch to see how the oil painting would proceed - so  I wanted to paint in the same fashion as I would do an oil painting. So the technique you see here will be more akin to the Victorian style of painting watercolours - rather than the modern conservative method. So I will be using Chinese white to produce body colour and various blacks and also maybe mix other opaque elements in too. We shall see how it pans out.

Anyway, I started first with a very faint pencil sketch. Then started experimenting with various colours to see how the painting would proceed.

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So, I've finally finished the painting. Hope you like it. I'll probably do some more modifications when I come back to it in a few months. We shall see.

 Anyway, I'm now going to enter it into the Jack Vettriano competition. I'll let you know how that goes.

So, while I am still pottering around with my painting of Simian Ongarian - I decided to finish off my Journey of Emoticon painting. As I was working on it the motivation and title changed to: "Where do you go to my lovely." If you recall this is an oil on canvas - 40x30cm.

So - I'll probably finish it at the end of this week and enter it into the Jack Vettriano competition in the Daily Mail. All I need to do is finish off Mr Chenapans cap and tidy up various highlights and finishing touches. I'll let you all know how I fare.

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So I've finally finished the drawing.

The trees in the background are a bit funny - i.e. skewed to the left and look like they're leaning a bit. But I don't care as I'll correct that when I do the actual painting.

When I finished the drawing I decided to trim the paper by a few centimeters on the right hand side. I though it would make the composition 'better' proportioned. Also I was in a particularly black mood that day so I put a black dog to the right of the picture - drawing the viewer into my dark world.

The next stage now is to do a watercolor sketch of the work (maybe A3 size).  But I'll start that in the next few days (I hope)

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Ok after a nice rest and a very long fifteen hour sleep I have finally got down to doing more work on the drawing.

As you can tell I've nearly finished it. I just need to fully define the trees and the bank and try to figure out all the compositional details needed. The more details I have the more busy and interesting the picture will be (I hope).

Anyway, I'll see how it all pans out when I attempt to finish it by Friday.

Next post.

So, after a few days rest I decided to work on the drawing some more - on Sunday morning at around 3am. I was using the same pen as before and continued on very slowly building the picture up.

Ok, I had the main ideas sketched out using the felt tip pen and I knew roughly how to proceed. I would have Simian in the foreground, the lake behind him and trees and buildings in the distance.

The next stage of the painting would now proceed with a detailed ink drawing on paper. I put do a highly detailed sketch of all the elements of the composition in preparation for the actual painting.

The pen I was using was a Staedtler technical pen - nib width 0.1 - I could have used a dip pen but I wanted the thinness lines possible. Also as I was doing this in bed, I didn't want to mess the bed sheets with any spillages.

(I stayed up late yesterday so decided to stay in bed until late into the afternoon to recover and also whilst I was there - prepare this composition.)

So I concentrated on getting the drawing of Simian correct from the outset. I was trying to define the head and eyes and draw a bit of the shirt he was wearing - introducing folds, creases and wrinkles.

This took the best part of an hour and by that time I was even more tired. So I'll probably leave it for after the weekend and continue with this on Monday. Or maybe do some more on Sunday in the early hours of the morning. We shall see.

Next post.

We were crossing one of the backs when I decided we'd "drop anchor" for a bit and I could do some drawing. I did an initial sketch below using pencil on paper. The punt was fixed to the shore via an iron chain - so the boat was a bit wobbly, but I managed to refine the drawing in several stages. I used a very hard pencil initially to get a very weak line. The pencil's I used were Derwent pencils on a Cotman sketch pad.

We then had the picnic finished off some wine and cheese - and then and I went home and had a sleep. After waking up in the afternoon I went over the initial sketch with a felt tip pen to get the major forms.

I then decided to block in the rest to get an idea of how I would begin to paint.  I carefully sketched the boat and houses as the main view and had the trees in the background on both sides to frame the picture. This was all done using a felt tip pen using broad strokes so I could get my arm moving. Basically I was preparing myself for the actual job of painting which would probably start in a couple of days - depending on how I felt about the composition.

The next post is here.