Wednesday 18 March 2015

Wire and Lollipop Sticks

I am experimenting with how to paint parts of my new work 'Against The Light '.
I've already discussed ways of painting the shadows of Laurel and Hardy using soft brushes and shapers (wedges of rubber to replace the bristles) in an earlier blog.
For the  shadow puppets (the real puppets, not the shadows) I wanted something harder and more clearly defined. On a recent visit to Brussels we saw an interesting exhibition of  alter paintings from Siena and I marvelled at the way the gold leaf patterns had been pieced through.
As the Javanese puppets also have intricate 'punched out' patterns I needed to think of a way I could do it in the painting.
I have painted the puppets in two layers. I left the first one, more heavily patterned, to dry. For the second coat, in a contrasting colour, I worked into while still wet. I scratched through with an old bit of wire (for harsher shapes) and a lollipop stick (for softer, less defined shapes) to reveal the  patterns underneath.
Yes, I can use less expensive tools when it suits the project. 

Thursday 12 March 2015

PayPal, Please

The virtual tour is nearly ready! Daniel is getting to grips with how visitors will pay and installing a new page on my website to make it all work.
He is using Paypal as the system to channel the money from the public to me, to obtain the twelve minute tour online, for up to two hours viewing. Lets hope it is simple and hassle free to use.
As it only costs 99p to watch, I hope you will be taking advantage of this fabulous offer. Sounds very cheap to me, but then I am biased.

Friday 6 March 2015

Henrietta and Mr.Turnip

Apologies. Last week I led you to believe that you could see my painting 'Encore!' on the PRINTS FOR SALE page in my website. Well I was wrong, it isn't there!
You can see it though, (it's a cross shaped picture) in the collection of photographs taken at my retrospective exhibition at the Babylon Gallery last March. They appear on
 Ted Coney's Family Portraits Facebook page.
Talking of exhibitions, I have just pitched another idea for a selling show at the Babylon entitled 'Henrietta and Mr Turnip'. This would centre around a series of observational drawings and paintings in preparation for two paintings I made about thirty years ago.
'Henrietta'  (the name for my 1931 Morris Minor) was used for a painting to mark her 50th birthday, entitled 'Golden Jubilee Ride' and involved a series of studies made in Constable Country.
'Mr Turnip' was a TV puppet from 1950s and I used him to represent my childhood in a painting called 'Diamonds'. I made the series of observational studies in the house where my family had lived for sixty years.
You can see all these studies on the PRINTS FOR SALE page. Honest !