More about fish, and my paintings

I am busy,busy,busy.... working on my new sea-bream paintings. I am having fun with the concept and playing with my paint. I bought a new brand of oil paint from the art suppliers, it is artist quality but it contains much more 'filler' and is much cheaper to buy. This is allowing me to work with thick paint and even some knife work, which I have not done in years. I am refraining from showing the photos of this new work for the moment, since I am experimenting at the moment I am not sure if I will show them.

Because the works are much more stylised I am able to work from my earlier fish studies, and some reference photographs without the need for the actual fish on a plate. I may change my mind later and repaint the fish more realistically, or I may even take them further into abstraction. Yes, I am having fun!

Fish, and fish...

I'm back after my weekends R&R. Mind you the fishing was hard work. We had bright sunshine and no wind at all on a shallow clear lake. Almost 30 anglers only caught 3 fish for two days. Modesty forbids me to mention who caught the biggest one :)



And speaking of fish I have been working on one of the fish paintings derived from my previous posted ideas. It is coming along but it still needs more work. I need to go to the artists supply shop tomorrow to get more canvases to continue working. I have plenty of canvas, but no stretcher bars or stretched canvases. I'll keep the pics coming as I gather momentum with the works.

Playtime on the Computer.

I have been playing for a few hours... I never really considered working in 'paint' (as on the computer) but I had a couple of workup drawings that I wanted to explore in colour. I was sitting at the computer and decided to draw them on the screen. Working this way makes it easy to change hue and tone. It's a lot easier than over painting areas. (But not as much fun or satisfying)
I ended up with these few pieces. I then created a few composites, and varied them slightly. I had come to an impasse as to where I wanted to bring my fish paintings. I think I have discovered where I wish to go.

Now I need to decide if I want to try and work the ideas as woodcut prints, or in oil paint, or again maybe both.

Well, we still have plenty of rain.



I have been tied to the house for an extent for the last week as Dubh has had to have an operation at the vets. Because of this I have to keep an eye on her when she is not wearing the plastic collar to stop her biting out her stitches. She doesn't relax or lie down with the collar on, but winges and whines (throughout the night) so I don't get a lot of sleep either. We will have to wait for the results of her tumor biopsies. Hopefully the vetenary surgeon managed to excise it all if it is malignant.



Dubh is not just a dog, she is more like a child, but with more tendency to have cuddles and not let you out of her sight than most children.



She is lying on the sofa beside me, snoring away, looking cute and quite comfortable. I know that if I stand up she will come alert immediately, just to make sure she doesn't miss anything. I have my work cut out to stop her jumping off/over the back of the sofa in an effort to catch up with me... She has already pulled a couple of stitches, and vetenary bills are expensive......

Meanwhile...

I managed to get into the studio yesterday, now things have settled down a bit. Dubh is quite happy to spend time in there with me while I work.

I finished off another piece, Filleted Fish II. 40 cm square, oil on canvas.

I now have to decide whether to carry on with the series or take a break from it. I will be away for the weekend, so I'll make a decision when I get back. I have a busy week ahead so I won't get much painting done anyway, unless I get the weather and time to do some studies while on my travels. I am going up to Northern Ireland tomorrow, I have meetings on Thursday. I have another meeting in Dublin on Friday morning, before I head west to Mayo again.

I have to go now, I am due at my framer's I need to sign one work before he finishes off the framing as it will be behind glass. He has the others ready for me now.

Update on my lino cut prints.

I finished the second ex-libris lino-cut, the one on the right obviously since I already posted the first one. I have sent them off to the Museum in Serbia, and now I can get back to my painting again.

I am still working on fish.. mainly sea bream, but I am nearly reaching the end of my journey with them. I may just finish off the works in progress and move on to something else.

If the weather improves I am still hoping to get some landscapes painted en-plien-air, to re-work over the winter. However this is less and less likely due to the inclement weather we have been having. This last month was the wettest August yet. We have had between 150% (east) and 250% (west) of normal August rainfall this year. Hopefully we may get an indian summer and a dry warm September so I can get out and about.

My Ex-Libris print is ready for the impression stage.

I have two draft print runs from my lino cut Ex Libris

The first is a two colour printing entitled The written word.

The background is made up of the written word in 11 languages.

The second layer is a design based on prehistoric writings and designs on some of our neolithic monuments, with script and ecrit reinforced. I opted for these as they are from the two most widely used western languages, English and French.

The second draft includes a third colour impression of a stylised quill pen. This was my intended design, but I think it is far too busy to work. For this reason I will probably go with just the two impression piece.

I have been using standard watercolour paint for the printing rather than the block printing watercolour

as I wanted to control the colour better. However I had a little problem with the

printing process when dampening the watercolour paper prior to impressing the lino-cut. (note the blurring on the second picture) I have used dry card for the two colour impression which seems to have worked better as far as a sharpness goes, however the edges have not come out clean in this one. I will try a varied level of dampness on the watercolour paper before deciding which paper to use for the final prints. I will also rework another design to send off, along with this one. I am more relaxed now that at least one is finished, as the second is not neccesary, but optional.

Slow work...

I still need to work on my Ex-Libris prints. I am just not happy with them as they are. I hope they will be come together soon as I am leaving other work aside to carry on with them.

This is one reason why I haven't posted recently, as I am getting behind in my work. I hope to print the latest lino-cuts tommorrow, and hopefully I'll be happy with the effects. I will post photos when they are done. In the mean time, I'm off out this evening....lad's night out so I'll keep this short.

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Of fish....

I have been busy with a painting of sea bream over the last while. I am still not happy with it but I will continue with it though, because I know the painting will get there eventually. I had started with the Bream looking like bream (on a plate). Obviously this wasn't going to work since the fish do look different in water, and light reflects differently.

I then reworked them and at this stage I have over-painted the fish four times, each time altering the balance between the fish as they are, and how they need to be for the painting.






Top, Sea-bream, unfinished


middle, Sea-bream, finished study.


bottom, Goldfish fry in my pond.







And speaking of fish, the fry in the pond are coming on in leaps and bounds. Today the fish are spawning again for the fourth time that I know of. I have at least three stages of fry in the pond at the moment. You will see two or three different sized fist in this photo of them, and there are more tiny pin-fry evident to the eye (less than a quarter of an inch, .5 cm)

The older fry are almost an inch long now and are happily shoaling in the pond, and ignoring the adults presence so I assume they are now of a size that makes them safe from predation.

It has been a while since I last posted here on my blog. Mainly because I haven't really had much to say about my work. I am still working away, not really getting to grips with anything. I am at a cul-de-sac with my ExLibris ideas. My painting is not coming along as I wish either, mainly because my mind is more on the printwork than on the painting.

I spent the morning retrieving small goldfish fry from my pond and putting them in nursery tanks.... anything to avoid work. Now I am here typing a post on my blog. I have already cleaned and scraped the build-up of paint on my palette, reloaded it with fresh paint, added oil etc, it is ready to go.........

....but I am not.

My studio is in danger of getting a thorough spring clean at this stage........[shock-horror]

I think I may take the rest of the day off. I am likely to do little or nothing anyway. It is hot, heavy and thundery with regular heavy showers which doesn't help either. I will leave you with a photo of the latest finished work from the Maltese series. Oil on canvas, 90cm by 70 cm.