Oil painting on primed card 5x4"

Time to get back into the swing of daily painting!
I've a whole load of objects in my shadow box, waiting to make an appearance ( I do find something very theatrical about the set up)
Here are a couple of books I found in a charity shop: Lieutenant Hornblower, and The Art of Thinking. I've not read them - I'm afraid I only bought them because they look beautiful - I love the faded, loose covers. I wonder whose they were and if they enjoyed reading them. 
A rather peculiar composition, but these studies I'm doing are designed as experiments rather than finished pieces. 
Its nice to finally feel like I've got the hang of technique to the point where I can play around a bit.
​I feel like I'll be using these books in a larger painting soon.

Oil painting on primed card 6x4"

Another little compositional study completed on Wednesday- two sick children to look after now - hence the lack of paintings! I’ll be back soon...

Oil painting on panel 5x7"

I've got an ill child again unfortunately - just a virus, poor little thing, but she's been ill for a few days now so I'm back to trying to paint and write late into the evening.  
I made this little study last night, the objects have crept round to the other side of the shadow box where the light is a little different again.  I like the strong diagonal shadows on the objects, but am not happy about how close they are to the drapes at the back.  I was thinking of painting the backgound entirely black but I think ill leave it as it is and try something different next time. 
I painted this pretty quickly, and only with sable brushes just so that I could try out the composition.  Ill be doing a few more quick studies like this as I'm planning on trying some larger still life pieces.

Not going to attempt to paint tonight as I finished this one so late  night last and got woken up a few times as well.  I feel a bit odd not painting on the days I can't paint, like something really important is missing.

So far I've managed 43 out of 64 days which isn't bad considering how little time I get.  Its definitely improved my painting a lot.

Oil painting on panel 5x7"

Oil painting on panel 5x7"

Another bright frosty morning had me setting up my easel by the banks of the river Thames again.  This group of trees is becoming a recurring motif in my paintings. You can find it in Orleans Gardens, looking over towards the Ham side of the river.
There was a lot of haze in the air which really increased the atmospheric perspective.  Its only a couple of weeks since the last frosty painting  but the light seems very different already as the sun is now higher and the light  stronger.
Maybe because of the smaller panel size, I didn't feel in such a rush this morning.  I remembered to step back and consider the overall effect a lot more.  I've been thinking about how to create colour harmony and researching this in Edgar Payne's book, Composition of Outdoor painting. I used a lot of blue and yellow today, it seems to tie the piece together quite well.

Oil painting on panel 8x8"

One of the positives to come out of my daily painting practice has been trying out new subjects.  I've really got into painting flowers, and have decided to make a series of flower paintings.  I think most of these are going to take me two sessions rather than one (remember I only have a couple of hours per day to create my daily painting - not a whole day) so while I'm doing these I will be posting every other day.
I'll still do other smaller daily paintings on the days I'm not working on this series.

These primroses were really hard to paint! The petals are almost flat and as a result had the very subtlest changes in value across them.  The folds in the petals were quite crisp and deep, hard to suggest without overdoing and creating very hard edges. I think I spent a large amount of time making adjustments to those creases and getting very frustrated with the results.  Its one of those paintings I like better now I can't see it compared to the subject!  
It seems to work ok as a painting but really I didn't feel that I'd done the primroses justice at all at the time.

I've included some process shots below.  I started with the pot and foliage but could equally have started with the flowers, in fact I think that would probably have made more sense as the flowers are likely to change much more. I'm starting with the flowers in my latest painting of some daffodils and will do a blog post about it tomorrow.

I hope the process photos are interesting, and maybe even useful if you are learning to paint.  If you have any questions, please leave a comment, I'd be glad to help.

Oil painting on primed card 6x4”

The shiny red skin of this apple makes it an irresistible subject to paint - however high chroma objects like this are quite difficult to render. It’s impossible to match the chroma in the lighter values, so I add in a little cadmium yellow medium which takes the hue around towards orange but keeps the chroma quite high. The values in the mid tones and lights are pretty compressed as well. I’d love to hear from other artists how they get around the high value, high chroma problem in their paintings.

Oil painting on panel 6x3"

I haven't managed any painting for nearly a week now.  Both my children were ill with the flu so I couldn't find any time at all.  Felt pretty rusty this evening trying to get back into it! 
Here's a little drawing I did of my daughters while they were sleeping on the sofa.

I hope to get back to normal with a painting every day from now on.

Original oil painting on mdf panel 8x8"

 I was torn this morning between painting the daffodils again as they had opened, or heading outside to paint the heavy frost, but it was such a beautiful morning it seemed a waste to spend it painting indoors  so I quickly packed up and walked down to Orleans Gardens.
Painting the frost was the hardest thing yet - squinting into that bright sunlight as it bounced of the ground was almost impossible. I found it difficult to judge the relationships between the values. Also I didn't reserve enough space for the white on my palette and it became hard to find any clean white to add the highlights.  This meant I had to finish the painting off at home, but at least I remembered to put in the tree shadows at the start this time, so I've made some progress!
I feel like the value relationships could do with a bit of adjustment, perhaps the greens in the foreground could be darker? Maybe Ill experiment with some glazes once its dry. I hope for some more frosty days to come so I can do some more studies outside.
And I'm keeping my fingers crossed for snow tomorrow : )

Original oil painting on mdf panel 6x9"

A few daffodils I selected from one of those £1 bunches that appear in supermarkets this time of year. I love the buds,  and the shape of the buds when they are just opening. Tomorrow I may attempt the fully opened blooms. I love the bluish green foliage and the silky papery bits that fold back as the flower opens (they must have  a name?)
Daffodils - love them : )