On The Tiles

A few weeks ago I spent a very enjoyable morning making a design for a ceramic tile in the company of Judit Matthews. Judit is an illustrative artist who lives and works near me, who recently offered to run a workshop on tile painting. Keen to try something new, I signed up and went along.

Judit’s studio is a lovely light filled room with loads of windows, and very high ceilings. It’s a great place to work. There were six of us in the workshop and with Judit’s guidance, we all managed to finish a piece of work in the two hours we spent together. Here’s mine.

I have plans to make further tiles using leaf and other designs, I just need to source the raw materials, and find the time! This piece will be placed locally over the weekend as the latest free art drop.

Update. Someone has asked me how you might frame a ceramic tile. I have fixed a small folding hook to the reverse so you could hang the piece unframed. I also mocked up a deeper section frame idea as an example.

If I was going to frame it like this, I would remove the hook (it is glued on and would slice off with a sharp knife) and fix the tile to the back of the frame with strong glue dots.

About The Weather : Further Developments

Since finishing and placing the Sunshine and Showers free art drop, I’ve continued playing with the basic design and colours in my mind. This weekend I decided to scale the idea up from last week’s 10 x 25 cm study, to a 40cm x 50cm canvas.

This time I chose three shades of blue – which I initially applied with different size brushes straight from the tube, before gradually mixing the shades together on the palette and adding white, creating more variations as the work progressed. I worked on an overpainted canvas – from memory I think there were about four layers of paint previously applied before I got to work on this latest one.

I like how the previous paint layers have added depth and affected the most recent one – and the continuous blending and mixing of the three shades of blue has produced a tonal variety which I’m enjoying looking at. If you would like to purchase this artwork, please get in touch.