Emma That Was.

Righto,

This one's a bit different and is one of the oil pieces I've been working on. It depicts - as the title suggests - Emma, circa 2002 when I first met her - long, thick hair, nose stud, eyeliner and a little rounder in the face.

I've given her the same blue cardigan and turquoise shirt because I think they look great with the slightly stylised fleshtones i tend to use, and the brushwork in this is a bit more my usual fare rather than very smooth like in 'Emma #3'

Is it finished? Probably not. Am I done with it for now? Yes. I really liek it in this state, to be honest. Sometimes I have this awful habit of overworking things - I get to a point where a painting looks great, and I keep on going with it and absolutely ruin it and there is definitely a point where you should say 'this looks good' and put your brushes down. . .

This looks good.

*puts brushes down*

Two Colour 'Studies'

I'm not sure how to classify this pair - they were both done in much the same vein as the black and white pieces - scrap pieces of cardboard, A4-ish, acrylic over initial pencil sketches and quite stylised, but rather than work over the usual white gesso base, i used a flat block of colour, one orange one a pale blue colour and THEN drew, THEN painted. . .

The results are maybe a little more finished looking to some degree than the other small pieces I've been doing, particularly the rather warm looking orange piece which features the return of Emm's oversized wool cardigan complete with 'Watchmen' badge. the original orange basecoat can be seen in the 'halo' and behind much of the other details.

The blue piece, which looks by comparison rather cold is completely different. It's less stylised and probably the closest to realism I've come in any of these Emma pieces so far - So the two combined kind of showcase both sides of my work I guess. The stylised Expressionist side, and the lesser showy side which is all about being precise and which I dip into much less. . .

Anyway. Enjoy.

Coming soon, an all singing, all dancing, all Puffin blog. Okay, there may not be singing and dancing, but there will be puffins. . .

Black and White, #3 & #4

. . . two further black and white pieces, one - the second here - more stylised, while one is a bit more realistic than the other three have been and maybe isn't technically black and white because i used some buff titanium acrylic which is just an essentially colour for anyone who paints people.

buff titanium. the absolute best base for fleshtones there is.

admittedly here it's used to make things a bit more subtle, and thus i'm maybe going to rework the 'ode' paintings i've done thus far including #3 to incorporate it - i like the way it works with the black and white, it adds. . . . SOMETHING.

anyway, i think this much more realistic little painting - again, about A4-ish and done on a scrap of cardboard and left rough in areas while worked tightly in others - is one of the best things i've done recently, it has some lovely quality. it's simple and uncomplicated. simple and uncomplicated is good. . .