Some signs of spring in the freezing cold weather. It still feels like there is snow in the air and the last lot has not melted yet on the mountains. We live in hope of some more sunshine to lift everybodies spirits.
I love silver birch trees especially when there are bits of bark starting to peel away from the trunk.
This particular one is outside Raglan Garden Centre, Monmouthshire, where I will be taking part in their charity day on Friday 8th March for their chosen charity Greenfingers www.greenfingerscharity.org.uk with their 'Re-Leaf' fundraising event to build more childrens hospice gardens. I will have more details about my involvement soon.
This is an experimental painting or practice piece I am working on for a painting of bees on lavender.
As you can see from the photographs I am building up layers of acrylic paint for my background.
Back from a long break of no blogs, so will try and blog most days from now to keep up to date with my painting progress. I spent most of yesterday updating the website www.absalom-art.co.uk ,with lots of new ideas for 2013 (check out the new gallery 'Visionary Art.'). I have added lots of prints and paintings for sale in the website shop and will be adding more shortly (mainly my flower paintings). I have a selection of new paintings at Gallery in the square, Usk which will be there for quite a while, including an exhibition of Rugby related art starting on 28th Feb 2013. Snowed in today so am working on a painting of bees on lavender inspired by a visit last summer to a Bhuddist monastry in Brittany.
This is my finished painting of the Nags Head Pub entitled "Usk In Bloom." I delivered it to Gallery In The Square today for their exhibition celebrating 40 years of the Gallery. I have since framed it, which makes it look even better. It was still very wet when I delivered it. There were some brilliant scenes of Usk in the Gallery, lots of different scenes and lots of talented artists to celebrate their 40th anniversary. Well worth a visit.
This is one of my Poppy paintings on the new style background. I think it works quite well and I will definately be using this on some more paintings.
This is a technique I have been working on for the backgrounds of my flower paintings. I have been using acrylic paint for this as it dries quicker than the oils, therefore allowing me to proceed with the next stage of the painting much sooner. As you can see from the photographs I start by painting the whole canvas in yellow, then a couple of coats of a light green, quite watered down so I can build up a couple of layers. After that has dried I splash the darker green paint onto the canvas, then lightly drag a large bristle brush up the canvas to create the final effect. I have just finished 2 paintings of poppies where I used this technique on the background and am quite pleased with the results.
