Some bits and bobs.

I had a couple of jobs towards the end of last year, one was to paint the interior of a WC like a stormy sky, almost black with clouds looming menacing and dark. This is the before photo, I’ve just sanded it down to key the first coat of primer, incidentally I painted this WC along with the rest of the house in 1993! aaagh that’s 24 years ago!:

after one coat of the keying primer and the first coat of grey,  chalk and charcoal sketching where I’ll place the clouds:

almost finished

about 10 or so layers of thin washes and clouding,  the darks get richer and deeper and it’s finished at last, this isn’t a terribly good quality photo sorry:

 

Another job was to paint 2 doors with studs. The doors were just plain wooden panelled doors, nothing special as doors go, and the owner wanted them to be perked up a bit and more  interesting.

 

 

Then she asked me to trompe l’œil a hideous melamine cupboard as though it were stonework and make it melt into the wall:

 

 

The same client wanted as a Christmas present for her husband, a copy of an antique painting he’d seen and fallen for but could not afford, it was a 17 century portrait of a “lady dressed as Jezebel”. The image given me was of very poor quality, an iPhone screenshot, so I did my best to invent what I couldn’t make out;  I started in monotone, which helps establish the tonal quality then moved to glazing various colours over and over many times as would have been the method of the time.

the original:

the drawing:

the monotone:

after a few colour glazes :

 

then I realised her face needed work after I’d coloured it, in my haste somehow I had entirely missed the facial shape in my original drawing up, so I had to correct it.

Here’s the final piece:

 

 

 

In between times I have tried to keep up with adding to my stock of small paintings, and here are a few.

 

 

and, back to interiors,  a couple of colour sketches:

 

 

 

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