10th Painting

I've come to the end of my second week, so 10 paintings so far. What have I learnt! 1. Decent paint brushes needed. (Bought some, expensive but worth it.) 2. Have the paint already mixed. This means having a good look at the image before starting out on it. 3.Have some background context.It makes the work look more interesting. 4. A good initial image is paramount although what turns out well is sometimes a bit of a shock.
Looking forward to next week. Will there be a plan?

9th Painting

The shadows on this face are a little disconcerting but in fact in the original photographic image they were even darker. It has a slightly cartoon look about it. Discovering every paint-mark has to be relevant and mistakes are difficult to amend in such a tight time frame.

8th Painting

Doing a '10 minute' painting has become one of the highlights of my day. How sad is that? Really, I have to concentrate so much with the idea of the stop-watch about to go off at any second.

7th Painting

This painting took about 11 minutes, so much for being strict, but it's amazing what you can achieve in 60 seconds.
Don't know that I am actually achieving very much at the moment but I think working quickly is having an affect on my other work. Struggling a little with images, I've decided to go around the department just capturing 'snapshot' images of people. Also had a few volunteers to model live for me for 10 minutes. Exciting and daunting.
Working with the writing group (there's only 7 of us) today to put together another edition of our little monthly magazine. Regularly discussing the George Orwell essay 'Politics and the English language' written in 1946, where he writes about making every word count. Constantly wondering how to achieve the same in painting.

6th Painting

This takes a bit of getting into on a Monday morning. Didn't find the image too exciting that I was working from so realise that choosing an inspirational image is going to be an assett. Bought some decent brushes so i can no longer blame my tools!!

5th Painting

What a challenge. Cheated today and took about 14 minutes as the early result was an insult to paint. Finished piece barely better. Going to be strict next week. Need to invest in some better brushes and lay out lots of paint before the 10 minutes begin. Can't believe how excited I am about this project, I think its already having an effect on my longer (timewise) paintings. Now want to look at artists who paint quickly!!

4th Painting

An unintentional Freudian slip in the spelling of 'painting' yesterday as I missed out the T which left the Paining. The expression on the painting's face said it all. 10 minutes is a very limiting amount of time to paint a portrait. Lots more to say about it. Don't know if you recognise this girl Todd?

3rd Paining

This is the third of my extremely quick paintings. It's tempting to keep going after the 10 minutes are up, especially if very obvious items of information are missing. The first 3 paintings are of my young friend Holly , although you won't recognise her from these pieces!

1st Painting

This is the first of my '10 minute' paintings. Apologies, it's appearing in the wrong place. Technicalities of starting a blog are tricky to begin with but hopefully get ironed out with practice.

2nd Painting

I'm setting myself the task of attempting to paint a face from a photographic image each day. The only rule is that the work is to take no longer than 10 minutes. I'll be happy if I manage 5 paintings a week. The idea being, to view the work chronologically looking at style and information conveyed. I have painted the 15th and 16th Feb. and will post them tomorrow with more info.

Welcome!!!

Welcome to my new blogspot where I hope to talk about my work as a painter. More later.