Short Oil Sketch Demo

Today I thought I might post a short oil sketch demo. I am painting the bay at the entrance to Cobh island at low tide. My palette is quite simple as can be seen below..

It consists of alizarin crimson, cadmium red, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium green cadmium blue and sap green. To help with the mix I am using a premixed buff and of course a large amount of titanium white. The underpainting is completed in burnt umber and I am also using a measure of liquin gel to improve the flow of the paint. The surface support is just a piece of waste foamex and the full sketch took about fifty minutes. My camera set up is just a cheap webcam held in place with some clamps.. not a very high quality output but as this is just a sketch you can still get the sense of it.

The camera sits between me and the easel so I must paint around it.. 

but it's said you must suffer for your art and that's the only suffering I intend to do today :)

Below you can see the movie of the work being painted, it has been speeded up by 

six hundred percent as I am aware that the internet is not a place where anyone stays 

in the one spot for long. So be assured it will all be over in about five minutes 

and is relatively painless.

The finished work is here. With this work from the very outset I loaded on the paint, not my usual approach but it seemed to work this for this particular case, also it was a lot of fun.

Entrance to the island        oil on foamex 28cm x 20cm

....and that's it, hope this was helpful or at least interesting for you and as always...

Thanks for looking :)

Churchyard Cat

Graphite on 150lb press 30cm x 20cm

 Every so often I get lucky enough to travel around the countryside with an 

art group that go by the name of Sceitse exploring different locations 

and their aspects of interest. This last trip was to the lovely seaside town of Youghal.

Always lots to draw on these trips, but what really caught my eye that day was this 

friendly cat happy to pose in the church yard. Unfortunately he wouldnt pose for long 

enough. But I was able to get quite a bit of camera reference from him and work this

little piece up in the studio later.

Thanks for looking :)