Work in Progress

Here are a couple more photos of the two commissions I am currently working on.
Finally got some colour on them today. The blue doors on the Provencial window will be louvered and the lavender will be coloured lavender - I just like to base it out with green first.

School Mural

Haven't had much painting time of late but managed to get some done on the school window panels today.
I have now fleshed out the tones a bit more. The paints I am using are Raw Umber and white with a Magnolia base...! Yes, I did say Magnolia :-)

School Mural

It has been quite a few weeks (months even) since I posted last. Consider my wrists slapped :-)

I am working on some panels in my studio at the moment. Two of the panels are for a couple of windows in a school in South London. When the school was extended these two windows had to be blocked in so with the panels I am aiming to re-create the lost view.
It looks a little bland at the moment whilst I plan everything out - lots of roof tops interspersed with foliage and some wildlife. I have just recently finished a Peter Pan theme mural so I have been painting lots of rooftops of late :-)





The other panel is for an exhibition stand and will be a Provencal window complete with lavender fields. Once I have planned something out I will post up some pics.

Anamorphic Playground Art

I have been up at my children's school today trying my hand out on a large scale anamorphic chalk picture. I went with the Rubic cube design to keep things simple - this is still new territory for me and I have a long way to go before I can produce anything remotely close to the quality of work by Mr Julian Beaver.



I spent the morning planning it all out with miles of string and in the afternoon I had about 25 children (5 at a time) to help me colour it in. Most of the chalk ended up on them and I'm sure their parents cursed me when they saw the state of their school uniforms : )

It didn't take the children long to figure out what the artwork was about - they appreciated that it only worked from one fixed view point and with one eye closed.

I may have some more news soon on the television front. The new series of DIY SOS will hopefully be starting in a few weeks time in which I filmed an episode up in Norfolk. There is also something else in the pipeline but I will say no more just in case.

Community Mural

I recently got myself involved with some community artwork when our local library was adorned with a mural depicting aspects of Wickford Towns life & history.
The library itself is of the New Town Modernist architectural style which was all the rage in the 50's & 60's so a dash of art to the outside wall panels went down very favorable with all the passers by.





Lisa Temple-Cox from Colchester designed and organised the painting of the artwork and got quite a few schoolchildren involved including my own son & daughter. My son even got his picture in the local newspaper of which he is immensely proud and is now insisting that he wants it framed for prosperity.

I helped out in a small capacity for a few days - it was actually nice to be able to work on a mural with somebody else calling the shots : )



Please have a look at Lisa's website at www.lisatemple-cox.co.uk to see more details of her work including pictures of her numerous community murals.

New Students Work

I thought you all would be interested to see some of the work that my latest students have produced.

The first piece is by my daughter Hannah and depicts her favourite subject matter of blue skies, green meadows & yellow flowers.



The second piece is by my son Adam and is entitled 'Gary'. Anyone who is familiar with 'Spongebob Squarepants' with recognise the famed sea snail in a rather psychedelic portrayal.



I am without a studio at present (due to moving house) so these masterpieces were painted out in the garden using the trellis as a makeshift easel. They also had to be finished in some haste as the weather decided to take a turn for the worse and it has pretty much stayed that way over the last week.

Things are in motion to rectify the studio situation and hopefully I will have something to report soon.

I look forward to continuing my mural & trompe l'oeil classes again as they were extremely enjoyable (not to mention hard work).

MiniBeast Mural

Over the last few days I have been helping a group of children from the Rettendon Primary School paint a backdrop for their school production of "Mini-Beast Madness".
The whole mural is about 12ft across and the children have also painted various bugs & creepy crawlies which have then been cut out and attached to the scene.
The mural was installed on the stage wall in the village hall.

For some reason lots of the children opted to paint ladybirds & snails and as all the snails, bar one, were facing the same direction I felt it appropriate for them to be racing each other (as snails do).

This backdrop was the second one the children painted - the first was started outside in the playground and, despite our weighing it down, the wind suddenly picked up & caused quite a mess with spilt paint.
Mark two was painted inside as soon as we managed to commandeer a suitable area to work - beng a small school of about 100 pupils space is scarce, especially when painting a 12ft mural.

I tend to help out at the school a couple of times each year with various artistic assignments from painting castle windows to garden design.
I am also keen to introduce the children to perspective drawing in due course - I just need to break it down into manageable chunks.