Girl on a Beach – 2012 Holiday Postcard #1

For the second year I’ve made an open offer for people to receive a hand painted postcard from my summer holiday. This is the first of my 2012 series of postcards, conceived after visiting the Picasso Museum in Malaga. The girl could be my daughte…

For the second year I’ve made an open offer for people to receive a hand painted postcard from my summer holiday. This is the first of my 2012 series of postcards, conceived after visiting the Picasso Museum in Malaga. The girl could be my daughter Keira who thinks the best part of a summer holiday is being near a beach or a pool. Her hair and the sandy stripes on the beach were particularly time consuming to paint and I used barely any water in the paint to achieve the solid colour. On reflection I may have found it easier to paint these parts in acrylic – the experience has certainly got me thinking about how to mix different materials.

The postcard was sent to Alison Chisnell. I hope you enjoy the finished product, I will share the rest of the series in the coming days.

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Learning to Paint – Untitled

I was just goofing around with blue and violet and thinking about China and about cameras and about movement. An odd combination of thoughts for sure – and it produced this. Watercolour and pencil on an A5 sheet of 300 gsm water colour paper.

I was just goofing around with blue and violet and thinking about China and about cameras and about movement. An odd combination of thoughts for sure – and it produced this. Watercolour and pencil on an A5 sheet of 300 gsm water colour paper.

Untitled

Headliner : Distracted by the jubilee?

This is the second of two mixed media artworks I’ve designed to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

This is the second of two mixed media artworks I’ve designed to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. The picture shows the design of the Union Flag overlaid with headlines from the Daily Telegraph published on May 29th and 30th 2012. The picture reflects what was going on in the news in the immediate run up to the Jubilee weekend.

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The newspapers were left behind by my father in law after a visit to our house and as I went to throw them away, one of the headlines caught my eye and the picture developed from there. On the reverse of the picture are more headlines and I photographed a further batch which didn’t make the cut (shown below).

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The design of the flag is based on the Union Flag, it is twice as wide as it is tall (38cm x 19cm) and all the other lines and angles are in proportion to the original flag. In the picture, the flag is depicted upside down, which indicates a distress signal. It’s clear when you read the headlines that despite all the hype around the Diamond Jubilee, life goes on and our capacity for committing crime and general unpleasantness is the over riding focus for the print media.

The picture was composed using water colour paint (Paynes Grey pan), newspaper cuttings and glue on mould made, acid free 300gsm water colour paper.