Paintings

A Big Abstract in a New Studio

After a run of monochrome illustrations and small restrained paintings it was great to get back to my first love, big, bright, loud, vibrant, loose, abstracts. Seriously this is my first painting bigger than 20″ x 16″ for around three months and it felt like coming home.

The painting itself is called cityscape and is very loosely based on the feeling that the Tel Aviv skyline in Israel gave me – it is certainly not representational, it is not a photograph or a view abstracted but rather a memory that is now 20 years old. The dimensions of the work are 4 feet x 3 feet.

This is also the first substantial work produced in my new studio which up until two weeks ago was my wife’s commercial bakery. It is a real step up, a lot more space, great lighting (no supplemental lighting whatsoever was used to make the video) and a door to the outside world. My last studio was tiny and had no windows. The difference is incredible and I’m really looking forward to working on some extended projects without feeling restricted.

Did I mention the wonderful light in the new space. I suspect that I will be mentioning it a lot more over the coming weeks and months.

Illustration Work

I have just finished work on a series of nine illustrations for theChicago Street Theater’s upcoming season.

For some reason I decided to video the process with a view to posting the results to You Tube.

The actual content of the images was agreed before hand as was the palette – blue. Working with just one color was certainly a challenge!

Here is one  of the pieces – The musical Annie.

Some Very small Paintings

One of four very small paintings (4 inches x 4 inches) done specifically to show and hopefully sell at our local farmer’s market. The organizers encourage the display of arts and crafts but not mass produced work.

We have a spot where we sell homemade cinnamon buns and if nothing else these and some other older paintings will add some color to the booth.

Here are all four paintings

and here is a video of them being painted:

Pinocchio – An Illustration

This is a video one of nine illustrations for the Chicago Street Theater 2010 season being painted. It is subject to approval so the final version may look different.

This is a challenging project because the subject matter varies so much. They also all have to be painted in shades of blue which means that I am forced to think about tonal values a lot more than I often do when painting.

Fish – Close Ups

Some details of the painting Fish. I accidentally left these shots out of the original video of the production of this painting: