Knowing when to stop.

I have no idea! There I was, embarking on a painting – my first ‘proper’ painting for about a year and a half – and then I just stopped. This painting was not intended to look like this at all, this is my blue underpainting stage, but having added blue tones to the central figure and put in the dark pollarded willows behind her, which were going to be almost silhouettes like my photograph, I stood back and had a look at it, and didn’t know whether to go on. Part of the issue is that those pollarded willows are…

Thoughts on Winter

These are a few very much work-in-progress (or even work-barely-started) sketches as I think on a picture for en exhibition entitled ‘Winter’. I wouldn’t have posted these so early, but if I don’t post something else soon, this blog is going to look as if all I do nowadays is Spelling Animals! (There are more of those to come…) I am thinking around naked winter twigs with just a few red berries hanging on after the leaves have gone and, because I like people-things, translating them into the idea of a gathering of Dryads. Stark black against a winter white…