Snow and portraits

Hi
It's snowing in Paris. Lovely but it means a total go slow. I'm not feeling very inspired anyway. There seems to be very little feedback, whether it be good or bad from people regarding arts these days. I'm not going to try to do anything for a few weeks. I'm just ging to go with the flow and see what does or doesn't happen.

I've been enjoying drawing people on the metro. Will post a few drawings of them here later. I've also been doing more portraits in oils. That's come to an end for the moment. I won't do any more commissions till January at the earliest. In fact, I think that I'll concentrate on Gravure. I've been missing my friends in the engraving group for some time now and thanks to the fact that I'll be handing the gallery over to someone else in January I'll be free to get back to that. Running the gallery has been so incredibly time consuming. Very interesting of course and I learnt a lot but so many other things that are important took a back seat as a result. What I learnt is invaluable though. It has given me a totally new outlook on art and the art world.

Here are some of the portraits I've done this week. Neither is finished and both were executed very quickly. I'll finish them off later. Oddly enough I've found that instead of speeding up through doing the portrait sessions, in fact I've slowed down. Great way to get to know people though.

Portraits for free.

I'm painting portraits for free in the gallery at the moment. If you are interested in coming along send me a message, phone or email. There are only a few days left this week. Most of next week is free. I'll give you the details when you get in contact.

Plein air, sketching, exhibition

Hey, been doing lots of things on the qt. Yesterday, thanks to an artist friend who looked after the gallery, I was able to go out and join some others at Fontainbleau for Pleine Air Painting. It was really a great day. Well worth taking the time out for. I'm a little ill with a cold as a result because it was freezing but I'm still very glad I went.

Here are a couple of photos.

I've also been doing a lot of sketching on the metro in Paris. The portraits above are of people I've seen on the train recently. It's a nice way to spend a voyage. I might take a day out just to do that, particularly on longer journeys, perhaps to CDG airport etc.

There's an exhibition coming up. Yes, my own work at last, rather than other peoples. It's in Style Pixie gallery. A great, off the beaten track gallery which I really like. It has an underground feel to it. The curator is great and the directress is very inspiring.

Narcissus Pickers

This painting is done in Oils and tempera on canvas.
It's for an exhibition in June.
Inspired by events in the south of france this spring.
It measures 150cm x 85cm

New Portrait

A portrait on canvas and painted in oils and tempera.

In the collection of Anne Frain.

Life drawing

It's taken a while to find a location for life drawing. There are some famous drawing groups in Paris but they tend to be very full of people so it's not so interesting. Recently I was invited to join a small group of artists at an atelier. There are four of us once a week and the space is good and big. Nice energy there and big windows with good light. The model is excellent.
Here are some drawings from the last session. Each took about 20 minutes.




This is the atelier. Nice big windows. Nice light.