Rockwell originals at the Dulwich Gallery!

This is incredible! For the first time in the UK you will be able to see in the flesh original Saturday Evening Post covers, advertisements and illustrations by Norman Rockwell. If you don't know who Rockwell is visit google images now.

The exhibition is being held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London between 15th December - 27 March 2011, for more information click here.

Further development on 'Ainulindale'

 
For the moment I've had to put this on the back burner but that doesn't stop me from blogging about it. Above you can see my final drawing for 'Ainulindale' (see previous post) which gives me more information to work with when I pull out my brushes. I have however decided to leave out the singing heads until the background is painted, then I can overlay them which will hopefully add to their transparency.

The top image is a few hours in advance from the final drawing. Here I have added burnt sienna and ultramarine acrylic to give me an under-painting that has warm and cool areas.

After the paint dried I diluted a marvin acrylic medium into a milky consistency and began priming paper with a soft hake brush, sanding in-between four coats just to be on the safe side. When everything dried completely I ran some magic tape around the edges to keep them clean.

Recently I have actually been trawling the internet for information on mounting and priming paper for oils. There are useful tips and videos out there but so far I haven't found anything on stretching paper with gum tape and then priming it - the advantage being the finished oil would just be on a sheet of watercolour paper without any heavy board attached. That means they are easy to store and very lightweight even with a frame because you don't need the glass! It would be strange to think nobody else has tried this before but who knows maybe I've just invented a new priming technique although I seriously doubt it.

Scrap that reverse it... or sometimes it's best to realise your mistakes

In previous posts I've shown some WIPs for an oil painting I have been working on. Unfortunately my oil painting skills aren't up to scratch and I've made a complete hash of it, I might just have to install a 'gallery flambeau' (check James Gurney's imaginative realism). So after putting that aside with a bin liner wrapped around it I've attempted a re-run on the concept and come up with this sketch. Fortunately this has been approved by my friends who will be receiving the final artwork so I can now get on with the final drawing.

To try to explain the composition it is taken from the 'Ainulindale' chapter in Tolkien's 'Silmarillion' where the world is created through song. I have tried to focus more on the environments this time but also kept with the singing characters. Also the circular composition is designed to be hung any which way and evoke a pulse of sound spreading from the center.