Back to Florence

I'm returning to my Florence paintings, I've previously painted the Ponte Vecchio, twice in gouache and pastel, and once in oils. The Ponte Vecchio is a crazy bridge built back in the Medieval times, and boxy buildings have been built along the length of the bridge. I'm guessing that spirit levels haven't been used for the horizontals and verticals, every one is doing their own thing! 

Unseen hidden inside the bridge are all the tourists crammed into the numerious jewellers that make the inside of the bridge look like an aladdin's cave.

This latest Ponte Vecchio painting is going to be oil on canvas, 30 x 60cm.  I plan to do lots of it using a palette knife. I'm interested in the repetitions of shapes through out the composition, it reminds me of the wooden building blocks my sons had when they were toddlers. I can see my sons using a few basic shapes of varying sizes stacked on top of each other to recreate this bridge.

The other importrant feature in my previous Ponte Vecchio paintings was the light and shadows. The sun illuminates the facades of the houses, and the shutters and blinds cast shadows which all have their own colours.

King of the Castle

My son has named this King of the Castle, or furry pile! It was a slow one, I've got on order waiting for an electric pencil sharpener, for my pastel pencils, my broken wrist is taking its time to mend. These beauties I met at London Zoo, all piled on top of each other making the most of the sunny spot in their enclosure

Otter w.i.p.

It's been a slow one, not much free time, and lots of fur. But I'm begininning to get there. Lots more to do yet, I'm not sure if I'm keeping the stray tail on the left, I had thought it would be good to show that there are even more otters are in the pile. On the right corner are two bolders which have a nice texture, and I've plenty of more tweaking to the fur.

Otters.....

Just as well I enjoy painting fur! Two more otters to go, then I have a bit of tweaking to profiles to do, and further detail to the fur.

Half-way there

I've had a break from my art, and had a lovely break in the Caribbean. We started in Miami, then cruised to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman Is, then finally Mexico before returning to Miami. I've now overcome my jet-lag/swaying so decided to get one with these guys. This is all about the fur, it's fairly labour intensive, I've been putting down a block of soft pastel, then working into it with finer harder pastel pencils and conte. Three more sweet ones to go!

Furry friends!

Today I got going on my second otter, the fur requires lots of layers of pastel to achieve the furry texture. Starting with a soft pastel, I've then worked into this with pastel pencil, then used soft pastel again to pull out lighter areas. I spent time today trying to understand the pose of the second otter. Now I've think he's beginning to work, I will get on with the back of the top otter.

Otters wip

First otter started, my broken wrist is making progress a bit slow, sharpening pastel pencils is hard, and in order to get plently of depth to the texture of the fur I need sharp pencils. I'm enjoying getting back to an animal painting, I'm just taking my time to allow my healing wrist to rest.