iPad abstracts

I have been struggling for the last week or so with a very large abstract painting (180x120 cm). I have over-painted it changed it, scraped it, sprayed it, done all sorts of things, but haven't achieved what I want at all. Then yesterday my sister forwarded me an email invitation to a vernissage in Paris of paintings by Lindy Foss-Quillet -  someone she went to school with and who lived down the road from us as kids. She was inadvertently important in my life because we looked after her dog a couple of times, otherwise I can't remember much about her because she was "a big girl" when I was little. I didn't even know until yesterday she lived in france, or that she was a painter. Anyway she does really nice brightly coloured abstracts which you can see on her website at www.lindyfossquillet.com.

On it she talks about starting her abstract paintings from a small sketch. I have never really done this for my abstracts - although I often work from sketches for landscapes and other less abstract paintings. Anyway, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that making abstract sketches on the iPad was a good way forward. So here are some - which i kind of like for themselves. I'm going to try printing one or two of them because I printed one of my Chagall-influenced iPad sketches and really liked the result.

So here they are..

Four completed paintings. Three more on the go (you'll have to wait and see for them). Three abstracts, one flowers. Am still working on enormous abstract (180x120cm) and a couple of  very small flower paintings.
The first two here are 80x80cm, the third is 100x81cm and the poppy picture is 33x24cm. All a mix of medias - oil, acrylic, spray..

Communication failure

New Rose

Police and thieves

Poppies in a blue vase

Just like London Buses

I've been stuck recently: painting things I'm not happy with, but continuing to paint even though what is on canvas is crap. The drawings have been ok, but what a load of bollocks I've painted. It all started with the cold weather and the desire to do the flower paintings. After that it got too cold to be in the studio at all and all I could do was draw. The last week or so I have been back in the atelier - not for long, am leaving soon - desperately looking for a smaller cheaper space - and it hasn't come together. Until today. I am now working on several paintings at once - painting anew, reworking things I started, and doing a couple of small flower paintings to add to the dozen I already have - to sell at the Marché de la Création  here in  Les Matelles in May. See if I do better than last year. When I sold nothing and the screen blew over smashing a couple of frames. A net loss of about 50€. Anyway, the tits are all going, going... and I am happy painting abstracts using acrylics, oils, spray and anything else I can get my hand on. As usual I am painting and scraping. Today I remembered something: when I was at school about a million years ago in the 6th form, my old art teacher, Terry Marshall (a great teacher it must be said) looked at a painting I was doing, and suggested we try something: he poured place paint all over it and then started scraping it off. It didn't work and looked a complete and utter mess. My painting was ruined! I think what I'm doing now is working a bit better. Thinking about it, trying to scrape poster paint off cartridge paper was a bit silly.

New Rose

This one is I think finished. I've called it  "New Rose" after my favourite Damned song. There is another which MAY be finished - I'll have to check tomorrow, another which I need to do more work on, and I have painted over the monster graffiti picture I did a couple of weeks ago and have a lot of work to do on that. You know a painting needs painting over when its presence in the studio is really annoying you.

Little ponys, muses and milo in the sun

Here's a sketch I did of some ponys yesterday during a pony games competition. These are little shetland ponys. There was a big black dog there almost the same size as them:

Ponys

Then there's this - which I have tentatively called "Muses" rather than "Tits sell" because I am a sensitive soul really. Anyway, lets see if Niall is right anyone wanna buy it? Yours for a mere 500€/£450/800$...

Muses, 80x80cm Acrylics on canvas 500€

Finally - here is Milo the cat on the staircase in the sun. For no particular reason!!

Milo in the sun.

Tits and Bulls

Here's some more recent work. Some Bull work - print-like but not prints - spray paint using hand-cut stencils on to some nice hand made paper, and a drawing especially for Niall, called "Tits sell"!

Spray Bulls 1

Spray Bulls 2

"Tits Sell"

Pining for the Fjords

This is May - I am told she is a Fjord Pony. She looks like Limahl from Kajagoogoo.

Drawings scanned

I have had scanner problems for quite a while so haven't scanned any drawings for ages. Anyway I have now so here's some - tomorrow I'll put lots more on the main website, but here's a few from the last few months - horses, cats, New York, Provence etc.

2 Horses at Réganel

Provence Alps - inks

 (oh) Deer

Horses at le Réganel

Inky Cat

Statue of Liberty

Milo on the sofa

If Chagal had had an iPad ....

Would he have come up with stuff like this?

Whaddya think of it so far?

Sometimes (if I'm honest, quite a lot of the time) when you are painting you aren't sure about what you are doing. Later on, when you have developed a sufficient distance in time you can take a look back and decide whether things worked as you hoped or not. So half way through a painting it's very hard. Sometimes I think I make a mistake by painting on when I should stop. Sometimes I should just give up altogether and start again. Sometimes I carry on and it works. Sometimes it looks ok and like it might get somewhere, but I am just not sure what I need to do next. This is one of those cases. I have combined an unidentified nude female figure on the left with a much more difficult to identify jumble of shapes and colours on the right. Again this is about identity, beauty and the beast, and other things - marks on a flat surface that make shapes. So that a few blue lines painted on the left make a female form, but what do the marks on the right make? DoI stop? Do I carry on? Do I start again? I think I will have to put this to one side and come back some time later. I think i feel the same about my "Cave Painting" too - the more I see it in my studio, the less happy I am with it. I feel like I am at a turning point with my pictures right now, but not sure what's next.

Cave Painting

So back in the atelier without it being ridiculously cold. I have been working on a big painting, 180x120cm, combining various thoughts about bulls, cave paintings and graffiti - they all link up in a weird kind of way. I like the idea of a wall covered in different types of paintings and writing, different types of graffiti, where it's impossible to tell what was done when. Maybe the primitive cave painting was done after the spray painting? Also,  there's a kind of irony in that none of it is real: it's all painted by me, on a canvas, not a wall. Not sure if it works, but here you go:

Cave Painting