Hand painted caricature in acrylic

Latest commission...

New portrait: E. F. Schumacher

Acrylic on board finished with two coats of satin varnish. This portrait was done for my good friend Sol Stephens of Durable Media, an excellent digital media company based in the heart of Bristol.

Caricature based on Keira Knightley, acrylic on board 16'' x 24''

Thought I'd try painting a caricature rather than sketching on paper + colouring digitally...



SKILL, ENERGY, POWER AND PASSION SPORTS PAINTINGS...

Here are all four of the paintings commissioned by the Picture Of Health Club+Spa to celebrate their 21st anniversary. Fantastic project taken on for a fantastic place!

SNOWBOARDER: ONE OF FOUR NEW ACRYLIC PAINTINGS

Below is one of four sports orientated paintings just completed for the Picture Of Health Club+Spa, all of which I shall be posting shortly. A brilliant and challenging project (each painting was 36'' by 36'') with a tight turn around (twelve days) that I was delighted to be involved in. I like to take photos at various stages of a project to chart progress, learn from mistakes and enjoy the journey taken to reach the final outcome-which does not always resemble the initial designs! Below are seven stages it took to complete my favourite of the four.

First of all, after wiping down the canvas, painting four coats of gesso (lightly sanding each one before applying the next) and dividing the canvas up into thirds, I sketched the cartoon in pencil. Once I was happy with the proportions and composition I mixed some cobalt blue artist's acrylic with Winsor+Newton flow improver (great for retaining colour when working large areas) and started to drop in the background.

I wanted sharp contours so I repainted the snowboarder's arm white and then masked it off using masking tape. Pale colours tend to recede while dark and vibrant colours advance, so using various mixtures of cobalt blue, ultramarine and black I worked my way up the picture surface adding depth to the sky by using darker shades the the closer I got to the top taking care to make sure the brush strokes were as even as possible.

I then turned my attention to the mid-tones around the snowboarder and in the foreground. These were tints mixed using cobalt blue, ultramarine, cadmium red and white. Here I tried to concentrate on breaking up the white surface with shapes intended to draw the viewer's eye back to the focal point, the snowboarder.

After placing a shadow beneath the snowboard and spattering white and light purple paint to try and create the effect of powdered snow being carved up I started to block in the base tones of the snowboarder before working up to the highlights and down to the shadows, mainly working dark on light. The final addition was the emerald green pattern on the snowboard, done and dusted! Below is the finished painting..



Life drawing 2007-2008

Figures in Motion, my latest paintings in acrylic...

This series of paintings are inspired by movement using couples dancing salsa as the main subject matter.

The idea was to look at movement and create pictures by implementing a combination of concepts I learned while studying animation with traditional painting techniques using the medium of acrylic paint on board. I wanted the first couple of paintings to be more figurative and then each painting to become slightly more abstract than the last. This is an area I will be developing in my personal work.



Fo shizzle....

This was a commission for a good mate Ant, a shit-hot barber based in Ely, Cardiff. He cuts the sickest patterns in South Wales! So get yo block chopped at his shop! 



Flaming tsunami, colour test for part of an old tattoo design..

first digitally coloured caricature (2007)

Below is a pencil sketch next to the finished caricature of one-uh-me-old-muckers...



Elsa-Jade, Oil on board, 2009

This was my first commissioned oil painting, absolutely loved working with oil paint. I used watersoluble oils which were brilliant in part because of the lack of solvents so they were n't a health hazzard but mostly because I was able to manipulate the paint over a longer period of time which really helped when it came to blending colours and creating depth.

School mural

Back at the start of 2009 I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to paint a series of six murals in acrylic at Ton Yr Ywen Primary School in Cardiff. Here are three of them. The designs were adapted from the classic Oxford Reading Tree books that are still going strong today, thinking back I learned to read following the everyday adventures of Biff, Chip and Kipper and STILL managed to finish the murals on time.....  :)

Fantastic job, brilliant Head and lovely staff made it a really enjoyable time and I even got some expert feedback on perspective from the children! This lead to an even better opportunity to design and paint the music-room wall in the Junior School the following month...

Jim...

Here's another oldie while I'm busy putting together some new work. A pencil rendered caricature on A3 that was a gift to my step-grandad Jim, a top guy!

Santa Cruz, acrylic on board

At the moment I'm working towards my first exhibition, Figures in Motion, and above is the first painting nearly complete. It's based on a film still of Penelope Cruz from Jamon Jamon and altho it does n't look like her, I'm happy with the outcome.

a few more caricatures...

Above are the other caricatures completed in the same manner as the Joe Calzaghe below, had a lot of fun drawing the props and trying to capture certain aspects of their personalities. Promised a friend a Jack Sparrow, so looking forward to having a crack at that and will hopefully be able post a copy in the not too distant future, savvy...

First blog - Digital caricatures from 2010

Here's a caricature I did early last year of the boxing legend that is Joe Calzaghe, as you can see it started off as a pencil sketch which I outlined in Flash and then finished off in Photoshop. I really enjoy this method of working and had intended to build up a port folio of celeb caricatures before certain circumstances changed, however I did manage to produce a massive collection of FOUR a further three of which I'll post shortly.