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 :)

Island impressions.. abandoned

Pastel on tinted canson 28cm x 20cm

Another island impression, this one in pastel painted inside an old outbuilding there while standing in out of the wind. The old gas cooker left to decay still sitting under the remains of a huge fireplace.

It made for a nice study and very different from what I would usually attempt.

Thanks for looking :)

Shoreline impression.

Oil on Foamex 25cm x 20cm

Recently I was lucky enough to spend some time on an Atlantic island called Illauntannig

off the coast of Kerry. Four days were spent in the company of 12 other artists on this otherwise deserted outcrop of sand and rock drawing, painting and generally enjoying the beauty 

of it's bleakness.The work above is an impression of the waves as 

they break on its western shore.

Thanks for looking :)

Old Tim fixing the weather vane

oil on Foamex 34 x 27cm

An oil painting of my friend and neighbor Tim as he fixes his weather vane above the chicken coop.

A task for which I was volunteered to help with and payment received by Tim modeling momentarily

on the ladder while I did the sketch. The painting was completed later from reference and memory.

Thanks for looking :)

Portrait under strong light,

Charcoal and colored chalk 30 x 24 cm

The other evening while the web cam was on I leaned in toward the computer screen.

At the same time I had the fluorescent light I use at the desk for sketching switched on. 

The lamps I use are old salvaged medical spotlights similar to the lights you would find in a dental surgery. Very bright.The dark light contrast I saw in the cam display was far too tempting not to draw so I completed this little work with dry pastels based on it. While I'm not too sure about the likeness as a self portrait, not being quite as lean faced as the work appears, I still felt happy enough to post it.

Thanks for looking :)

Sailboats sheltering in the early morning in Drake's pool

Oil on masonite 31 x 27 cm

For this piece I tried to concentrate only on the color shapes in the scene.
Rather than attempt to paint boats in the water I placed on the  masonite
as accurately as possible, a description of the shapes I could see and the
colors they assumed without regarding them as components of the real
world but instead just considering them as a collection of abstract
color shapes.

Thanks for looking :)

View across the bay

Oil on oilboard 40 x 30 cm

This is a view of the bay below the bridge at Glenavaud. 

The tide is out and the sky

 is full of that soft damp greyness

we are so used to here.

Thanks for looking :)

Mid Winter Fires

Oil pastel on tinted canson 20 x 15 cm

This was done using  Sennelier oil pastels. 

They are a real treat to work with, being the softest

oil pastel I have ever come across.

Thanks for looking :)

Oil painting of a coastal view

oil on masonite 24cm x 27cm.

This is a view of Fennell's bay from the beach at Myrtleville. This

is my second time working with masonite, this time after prepping it 

I used the smooth side. To prepare the masonite I first coated it with two generous coats of 

gesso, when they were dry I gave it an acrylic undercoat and when that dried I coated it with a 

cold pressed linseed oil. The smooth surface was really nice to work with, but if you are trying 

this, personally, I would recommend soft brushes as the pig bristles leave too many scratch 

marks for comfort.