Monthly Archives: January 2018

sketchbook pages on my bedroom wall

Its my last few days here in Wales for a while, I’m heading back home to Ireland on Tuesday, having been away for two months

While I’ve been away from my studio I’ve been making acrylic sketches on paper. 

Today I added a final layer of oil and cold wax medium to the sketches, using just two oil colours, violet and yellow

Then I stuck them up on my bedroom wall with gum strip ,(that sticky backed brown paper that is used for stretching drawing paper)

I also had a great time browsing through some of Richard Diebenkorn’s sketchbooks in the wonderful accessible digital archive from Stanford

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-Diebenkorn-Cantor-Arts-Center/dp/0804799172

aaargh acrylics!

Trying to get a painterly, layered, rich, unfussy, not too ‘overworked looking’ effect with acrylics. Using a gloss gel medium. Applying with a squeegee. Layering by transferring onto and from baking paper. Very frustrating. Looking forward to getting back to my oils and cold wax medium in my studio at home!

Some images from an A2 (60x40cm) cartridge pad, and an A4 (40x30cm) brown card sketchbook

New York memories of 2016 & plans for 2018

I had a fabulous, very short trip to Manhattan in July 2016. I had such a good time, and I want to go back for more! I’m hoping to go for nearly a month this Autumn. To see the ‘fall’ colours, to visit more contemporary galleries in Chelsea, and hopefully to paint, if I can find some studio space!

Here are some photos of street views and some favourite works I saw in galleries on my last trip, and a few of the paintings of mine that came out of it

Yves Klein

Matisse and Degas



The High Line, diptych, each canvas 80cm sq, private collection

5th Avenue, small oil sketch in paper made ‘on the road’

Homage, one of a pair of 80cm canvases, available through http://www.velveteasel.co.uk