Edith, moving on… For sale (as always, of course)

At long last.  
I’ve been meaning to try out painting some of my beloved birds, wildlife or other animals for years.  One difficulty was finding my own source material.  That and loving painting landscapes too much.   I’ve now had the idea of making a visit to my local ‘city farm’ where I hope to get some photos of ducks, chickens, geese, goats, sheep and pigs.  Must do this soon.
Meantime, on my recent trip to France there was a gang of chickens who lived free range and did circuits of the hamlet I was staying in.  Having never spent any time in the vicinity of chickens before I didn’t know how characterful they are, and what great subjects they make for a painter.

It’s true that chickens (like hares) are a much-painted subject, and I now know why.  
For a start they are amusing to observe, but they also have great shapes, textures and colours.  The particular gang I saw were also all different breeds (I think), so as a group no two were the same.
Anyway, I took as many photos as I could.  A lot of the best ones were not taken in full sun as this one was, so I’m not sure how useful they’ll be for painting from.  Possibly fine, but the light and shade I think is beneficial to this subject.

This was literally the first go I’ve had at something like this in many years, so I was quite encouraged by the result.  But it’s that thing – have I said it before? – just paint, get fully immersed and enjoy the process, take your risks and don’t worry about the result.  It doesn’t always mean you’ll succeed, mind, but it means you’ll be giving it the best chance.  Plenty of work to be done here though.  I used soft edges for the chicken’s fluffy rear-end feathers, which also helps give an idea of movement, but I think there’s potential for more of that sort of thing.

I was a lot less lucky with my next new venture!
Flowers is another subject I’ve rarely felt inclined enough to take on.  But I’ve been meaning to force myself for a very long time, as I do sometimes like flower paintings, and anyway it would be good practise.  I will persevere with this, I think.  First goes at any ‘new’ subject I know full well I can’t expect to be successful.  A totally new subject presents a whole load of new problems you haven’t had to consider before.
One learns a method of painting skies, grass or water, and I don’t yet have my methods for still life/flowers.  I need to keep experimenting and playing around.  Do I start with the negative areas, or the positive?  Do I build the whole painting gradually, or more one area at a time?  Do I go for partial abstraction or want a more realist depiction?  Do I go in early with darks, or hold back with the paler tones and go more tentatively to learn… Do I use more soft edges, less detail/greater simplification of subject, of background…. And so on.  Many other questions will raise themselves as I play around with it which will all need thinking through, analysing (the result), and then trying a different tack next time.  

The photo here is as close as I’d like to show my first go! Unfortunately one problem with this subject is again getting the source material.  I like roses, although mainly when they are living, and smelling lovely.  They don’t last long once picked of course, and are a bit expensive to buy regularly.  I hope to report back on this some time later in the year, if I’ve made any progress!

Damp September afternoon.

Finally, this painting is the subject of my new Youtube video.  
The footage is ‘in the can’ but I still need to edit it together.
I plan to do more videos from now on, and this was to get me into the swing.  I now have a second camera, which is focussed on my palette.  I’ll also be adding a commentary.  We’ll see how that goes!
This painting was based quite loosely on a photograph, but I changed the weather, added the big tree and sort of made it up quite a lot as I went along.  Bit of a trial run for the camera set up, but as it turned out, hmmm… not too badly I thought I’d put it together.  Unfortunately my cameras turn themselves off after 20 minutes, which I forgot until too late, so the painting of the tree itself is missing from the film.  Oh well, it’s a learning process… For next time I now have a kitchen timer in the studio as a key piece of my recording equipment!
I should have the video up on my youtube channel within a week or two.