my xmas cards have

Posted on 16 December 2011 by sgolding

an evolution, from the early days when they were of our cat, and now of our cat with our children.  Originally I did them as wood or lino cuts and hand tinted them but now I have not the time to carve and then print the number of cards so I do a watercolour and have the cards printed.  I still start with a concept sketch:

now the idea was that the children were co-operating to catch the cat in the tree, but there was not sufficient drama or movemnet so I reworked it in the left of the first drawing, then redrew it to add movement and more drama and did a watercolour:

and other years underwent similar development:

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Homage to Stan Cross….

Posted on 14 December 2011 by sgolding

A theme of this blog has been the way my paintings develop from drawings.  Look in the portfolio for the finished work:

and the final work in place:

 

and another view on the diagonal showing the shaping of the canvas:

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Meow…

Posted on 2 November 2011 by sgolding
A few years ago I drew our cat Eclair, asleep on a cane chair, as a form used to frame the sleeping cat:

pencil, ink and wash on paper

I have been working on a painting in oils recently based on this drawing.  The drawing uses the white space as a negative form around the image.  This is characteristic of drawing but not of painting, which has its own vocabulary,  At this stage here is where the painting is and since taking this image I have added a tinted glaze to the yellow space.

oil on linen- not in final state

 

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more stages in a portrait ……..

Posted on 29 September 2011 by sgolding

to continue- the final preliminary painting is:

oil on linen

The painting was developed from a series of drawings of the quartet, made in concert:

 

in a range of mediums:

 

and formats:

to finish the images in this post with a compositional sketch:

all of which goes to show the amount of thought and work that goes into a painting.  The concept that “talent” as a quality allows an artist to pluck an idea and image from the back of the retina and lay it down on a canvas immediately and without effort is foreign to my experience and practice- the painting is built from the drawings  and ideas are developed into the finished work.  The conceit of John Donne of dashing off a finished sonnet in his spare time is a falsehood to me.  No author makes a draft do they?

 

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