As I look back on the year I can honestly say I’ve painted some of my best paintings, And most of them seem to be in acrylics, the first of the year was ‘Marion and Tony’, painted for the client from a photo.
And the pet portraits for a client are also done in acrylics – ‘Wooster’, and ‘Peanut and Evie’, both done from photos, the one of Wooster used two photos, one of the dog, and another of the background, but he looks like he’s actually in the grassy setting.
I did two more of the quirky underwater realms for a client who already had the first underwater realm painting and wanted a set of three for their walls. So I painted the ‘Underwater realm of the Fire Vicuna’, and ‘Birth of the realm of fire and water’. I love the hint of magical creatures emerging from the water and half hidden within the paintings.
And totally out of the blue at the beginning of May the BBC ‘Have I got news for you’ television show rang me as they wanted to use one of my photos of Stuart Haywood, which was aired in early May (and I got paid for it!). Certainly a first for me the BBC ringing me up!
And on a totally different note, but also connected with another naked man, I was commissioned to do a very male pencil drawing part of the later in life bucket list, as the client described it to me.
And on a certainly different note I painted ‘Contemplation’, a vertical painting in acrylics on paper, of a woman in a decayed Gothic setting, the painting more atmospheric as its vertical, which I like a lot.
My favourite picture f the year though, is ‘Come on in’, in acrylics on canvas, and I love painting beautiful women, and the challenge of painting water so it made sense to put the two together!
I adored the ‘Tree goddess; painting, as did someone else as they commissioned me to paint one for themselves. They’re very complicated to paint, with a lot of detail but I think they’re massively inspirational.
I loved doing the ‘Tree goddess’ and then the ‘Water goddess’, which naturally lead on to the ‘Sea goddess’ painting, all in acrylics on paper.
And the last one of the year was ‘Autumn golds’ another acrylic painting, that looks simple but had quite a bit of complexity in it to make it look simple!