Hello world

I'm sat here in the middle of some admin tasks wondering what to write for my news entry for today. This may interest you, it may not. It's certainly nothing to do with art. Sometimes I look into my website statistics more deeply than others - some days I don't look at them at all. To be honest, there's so many aspects to the statistics charts and I can't say I understand them all. I just concentrate on the more important figures - like what pages are popular, how people are finding me, what their word searches are. Where my referrals are coming from. It's very rare that I view the actual country locations of my readers but this afternoon I thought I'd check it out. Wanna know ? Going straight to the top of the chart we have the UK, followed by the USA. That I expect. Next we have - in order of sessions - Australia, Germany, Russia, Japan, China (that means I can expect some spam emails), Uruguay, Sweden, Ukraine, France, Mauritius, Spain, Colombia, Austria (Hello Helga), Bulgaria, Canada, Netherlands, Portugal, Indonesia, Israel and finally Kenya. Some visitors' locations fall under the heading 'un resolved' - no idea what that could mean. Some fall under the heading 'EU'. So - a big hello to the world, I'm watching you watching me........or rather, these beautiful blue eyes are watching you. They are the work of my recent portrait student. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Inspiration from a student..........mmmmm

Today's student, Lynne, has given me an amazing idea for a new painting subject and I just hope I get the time to work something out to see if it's viable. Even better if I can get it organsied this side of Christmas (there's that word again!). Today I taught Lynne a seascape using many of Joyces techniques. A more traditional style of painting, but a style where you can really tickle out some lovely details and effects. You do need a light hand for this and Lynn, managed just that with some amazing results, as you can see here. Lynne, always at the end of a painting session will critique her own painting very harshly indeed - always striving to do better and better. After today's lesson all she could fault was that she wished she had put 2 rocks in her painting instead of 3 - so that speaks volumes to me. Well done Lynn and thanks for the marvellous inspiration.

Portraiture in 3D - the new craze ?

I'm tempted to teach portraiture with a difference. Maybe some 3D effects would be quite cool. I've been experimenting with a couple of ideas - see what you think. Here's the story.......when I teach portraiture I need to have something to work on to use as the demo. One of the demo portraits currently on my easel is of my daughter, Stef. She was quite surprised to come home from work to see the underpainting stage, and I think she's quite chuffed with it so far too. She's already cleared a space on her bedroom wall, so that's a good sign. Now I've told her it will be a basic portrait and I don't intend to paint in her fiddly jangly dangly earrings. She's insisting I do. Jokingly, last night I took the portrait upstairs to her bedroom, found the earrings in question and tried to sell her my new 3D effect. I could simply pierce her ear on the canvas and loop the earring through - voila. In the spirit of artistic licence, I also took one of her longest, fullest, blackest false eyelashes and stuck it to the top of her eye - enhancing the dimensions and giving the portrait a very lifelike, touchy-feely concept. I guess you had to be there - but it was a right giggle. Of course, I'm joking, I'll paint in the eyelashes and a lot of other details too - still not sure about those earrings though.......what do ya reckon?

Popular Pop'in

During yesterday's pop art class, students painted a mixture of subjects - both celebrity and family members. It was a first time for all students and all of them were just a little doubtful as to how well they would do. That's when you just HAVE to trust your teacher....... Relax, put yourself in my hands, leave the worrying to me. It's what you are paying me for. Pop art is such a cool way to make a unique and personalised gift for someone special. Many of those who have learned it have received requests to paint more....and more.....and more. So, bearing this in mind and being well aware of the 'C' word that will be upon us in a few months, I am adding more Pop Art Classes to my class timetable. Your Pop Art session can be spent in several ways. You can start the work on a particularly complex and large portrait, or you can complete a 'normal' one. If you can't finish a Pop Art in the one session it is very, very easy to continure working at home - and several students have done this with 100% success. On the other hand, I have some students who use their class to prep several canvases with the sole purpose of working on many of them at home - enough to keep them ticking over for a few weeks. It's a great way of taking full advantage of my equipment. I only take on a few students at a time in a Pop Art class, which means it's a very intimate and friendly session - probably the next best thing to a private lesson. If you'd like to give it a go - click here to see the details of my next session. And if you can't wait - there's always private.

Back to work.......

The holiday break has been great - and so has the weather, which was a welcome bonus. It's back to business as usual now though. Student Sue and I have kicked off the week by working on her second portrait lesson. All the colours have been added over the underpainting, many facial details have been completed, we've worked the background and started on the clothing. I'm fully confident this can be totally finished off on one more lesson. The portrait lessons are taught in 3 hour blocks and will continue until the painting is complete. Each block is £45 (weekday rate) and the price includes everything you need to make the portrait. It's a great way of working, with classes running (normally) from 10am till 1pm. Other times can be arranged if needed. Next summer I will be running evening classes from 6pm to 9pm to suit those of you who work full time. For more details on portraiture classes CLICK HERE

Learn to paint portraits

People have been asking about Portrait oil painting lessons for some time now. Portrait painting in oils is something I took up back in June 2009. I sat down one day with a photo of Capt. Jack Sparrow, played Valerie Stewart's demo DVD and had a go. I liked her style and technique A LOT. I've painted many portraits since then. Some have featured on my website, some (more private ones) haven't. I've taken on several commissions and I have to say, I totally enjoy every aspect of portraiture. What I want readers to know, basically, is the experience that lays behind the teaching. I have involved Valerie in many of my portrait works over the past 15 months. She's been just an email away every step of the way. Just before she came to the UK, 3 months ago, she announced that I was ready to teach portraits. During her 4 day seminar in June, I gave teaching a go and assisted some of the students. I paid very close attention to Valerie's teaching style, the way she corrected mistakes, picking up as much information as I could. Valerie has given me the benefit of her years of expertise freely. Although I may have been ready to teach a few months ago, I actually haven't had the opportunity to do so, (due to prior committments), until today. I have opened up a new web page showing some photos from today's class and giving you all the details of how portraiture classes work. If you CLICK HERE you'll see how we got on in this exciting new class.