Where business and the arts meet, making work better together.
Having taken a 12 mile stroll along the River Wandle recently, our local river is on my mind again. I’m enjoying making panoramic art at the moment, and playing with slightly watered down acrylic paint. This piece will be my next free art drop.
Preparations for the Carshalton Artists Open Studios are in full swing here, aka panic mode! I’ve been working on a larger (80cm x 30cm) canvas for a while, with a local theme in mind…
I’m currently torn between the River Wandle and the lavender fields which our area is well known for. I’m keen to work up this canvas and because I am unsure where to go next, I’m currently experimenting with some patterns on smaller pieces.
The intention is to offer up some cut shapes containing various colours and patterns to the larger canvas, and see how they do, or do not work. Earlier in my painting career I’d have blundered on with the main canvas and maybe ruined it. Now – when I get to a point where I feel experimentation is required, sometimes I do it in such a way as to preserve something good and as yet unfinished. Also – by working like this, sometimes I get the added bonus of a free art drop emerging out of the experiment.
Siobhan Sheridan shared a photo on Instagram a few days ago. It depicted a grey sea, a grey sky, and some heavy, grey clouds. It’s a lovely moody picture which stuck in my head long after I finished looking at it.
Over the weekend I took my block of Aquarelle Arches panoramic paper, and loosely recreated the scene from the photo.
I really enjoyed the ragging technique which I used in the upper third of the image, so much so that I’ve started on a much larger scale version.
This is a work in progress, you can see the two art works together here for comparison purposes.
