Trompe l'oeil Butterfly

Here is the picture that Billy (DIY SOS) asked me to paint. It is for a charity auction in aid of the Keech Cottage Children's Hospice near Luton. Their website can be found here.



The trompe l'oeil has been painted onto a small canvas 30 x 40cm - compared to what I am accustomed to that is microscopic : )
The butterfly depicted is a Peacock and the background is a simple aged stone effect with lots of paint splattering from a toothbrush - apparently they also brush teeth : )

I also promised Billy that I would get my children to paint a butterfly each as well which they duly did.

Billy popped round this evening on his way to the next DIY SOS shoot to pick up all three masterpieces. I will keep you posted as to how they all fare in the auction.

Provencal Window Mural Video

Here is the finished video as promised - I had a lot more footage to edit down this time but managed to get the video time to just over 4 minutes. Hope you enjoy it.

There was one slight mishap during the filming - I accidentally knocked the camera tripod and had to re-position it. I nearly got it back into the same position.



I also quickly put this video together.

In order to paint the Provence scene I had to first roller over the crumbling wall effect I had painted a few weeks ago.
It would have been criminal 'not' to film it.

DIY SOS

I have been painting some trompe l'oeil up in Norfolk over the last couple of days with BBC1's DIY SOS team.

I cannot divulge anymore information about what it was I painted and the nature of the overall makeover that Julia Kendell designed - you will have to wait until the show airs which may be towards the end of the year.
The Gosport show that I did with Gordon Collett was filmed in the March and broadcasted the following September so I'm guessing around six months.

I can say that it was a more extravagant piece than I painted at Gosport where I painted a simple stoneblocking effect. Although most of the credit for the Gosport show goes to Gordon who painted the fantastic trompe l'oeil statuette and the dinosaur. Gordon was unable to the make the dates for this show - hopefully there will be other opportunities.

It was great to meet up with everyone again- Julia, Nick, Billy, Chris, Julian, Mark & Mat. They all really work hard on these projects (including Nick) and put in long hours to ensure everything completes on time. The two days I was there we finished around 9pm which suited me as I had about four days work to cram into two. I could have done without taking a wrong turn on the way back to Essex though. Fortunately I managed to get home just before midnight !

Billy has also set me an artistic task in aid of a charity he supports - I may even rope in my daughter Hannah to help me.

Provence Window Trompe l'oeil Mural

This is a picture of the latest trompe project that I have filmed.

I tried something a little more involved this time with more use of perspective techniques - especially for the louvre door. It was also a bit more time consuming and took a little longer than anticipated.

I had an empty bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape which I had polished off months ago. I had been meaning to use as a reference for a while now and seeing as it hails from Provence this seemed an ideal opportunity to paint it within the mural.

It may also take a while before I get the time to edit all the raw footage as I have another daunting project this week which I will write about soon.