Progress Report

This is still a work in progress.

Work in Progress

I'm painting this lass on a medium sized canvas. As you can see it's in the very early stages, I plan to darken the darks and lighten the lights. Oh yes, and also paint midtones while I'm at it. Lots to do.

Tiger

My painting of tigers and other big cats continues unabated. I like adding a tiger here and there 'cause they add a big splash of orange to a piece. I used to hate orange, but I think I might love it now. This is quite a small painting, 7 x 5".

Pin Up

Snow Leopard

Water Nymphs

Dublin City

Here's a painting I did of Dublin. I'm really happy with how the clouds came out.

Submariner Albino

Warrior Fields

Medusa Sleeps

I'm currently approaching galleries and showing them my work. This is one of the paintings I'm showing. I borrowed my Dad's digital SLR and took some proper photos of my paintings finally. It took an age to set everything up and they looked all grainy, then I realised I had it on the wrong ISO and had to take the photos all over again, sigh!

Doll Face

Ah, spring light, it makes me so happy. Maybe I have season effective disorder or something. I'm just so strongly effected by the light quality. There's a cute little cafe at the top of Waterstones, but I always avoid it because the lighting in the place is intensely blue.

Above is a close up of a painting I was working a couple of days ago. Her figure takes up all of the canvas. I gave myself seasons as a theme and she was supposed to be summer, but I'd rather not tie the painting down to it's theme, just let it grow in a subconscious sort of way.

Ghosts in the Temple

This had been sitting round for a while being almost complete. I finally put the finishing touches on it today, and I've just got to sign it now. I'm very fond of this painting, it just came together so nicely and so easily. It was done over a painting that just wasn't working, but the old painting did help to shape the composition, so it wasn't wasted in a way.

Painting in Progress

This painting's still in progress. There are a lot of stages it went through already, which helps add to the texture. The lighting's is bleaching the photo in the top right corner, but that's kinda nice, maybe I'll lighten it.

The big face on the left was based a little on the Curio robot, but it's starting to look a bit like Eve from Wall-E.

My New Easel

I've inherited a couple of easels, but this is my first bought specifically for my needs. Stephen bought it for me for Christmas. It's a Mabef M33 easel. It's very tiltable, and most importantly just light enough for me to move about the place (which is some feat with my spaghetti arms), but still sturdy.

Another of his presents is on the floor behind, the Fat Duck Cookbook which is resting on the bookstand my Dad made for me many moons ago. The cookbook has tonnes of Dave McKean's illustrations in it, which is why Stephen bought it for me. I presume he's not expecting any culinary miracles.

The painting on the easel was started before Christmas, I painted it resting on my desk to begin with. I'm much happier painting on the easel.

Chris the Christmas Tree and the A&E

We got our Christmas tree yesterday. It was Stephen and my first tree together and Stephen's first live Christmas tree, he's enjoying the pine freshness throughout the apartment. He nicknamed him Chris.

Anyway it was all so exciting I ended up in A&E last night with the most incredible pains in my stomach, just an extension of the illness I've had for the last three weeks. I had been feeling a whole lot better recently 'til then.

These paintings were done a little while ago. I painted them on the floor (not directly obviously, they're on 100% cotton paper) on a large sheet of plastic. Stephen's getting me an easel for Christmas, I do have a portable easel stored away, but there's something about working on the floor I always enjoy. But when we get the sweet Mabef easel I picked out I'll be a bit more organised and be able to paint bigger paintings too.

Red Riding Hood

Best-Loved Irish Legends

I haven't had a chance to post these before, these are a couple of the illustrations from Best-Loved Irish Legends. The deadline was really tight on it, it worked out at about 2 days per spread (which is two facing pages to you non-publication types). I put loads of work in to make sure the illustrations were still good quality.

Tiger Lily

This is an as of yet unfinished painting. It's quite small and I'd like to paint a larger version eventually.

I'm illustrating another book at the moment so most paintings are on hold for the time being.

Hey Red!

My back started hurting again today, I also skinned my big toe and hit my funny-bone. I knew it was going to be a good day when I got up this morning.

Stephen's adopted this painting and all I know is big, red hair is awesome.

Baby got back problems!

I threw my back out yesterday doing tumbles, apparently I'm not 4 years old anymore. Today I did nothing but quest for pain relief.

On the plus side my A4 scanner is working again, although this painting was photographed along with the one from the previous post. The lighting was far from perfect for this, but whatever, you get the gist.