The Unfortunate Career Of Stede Bonnet, 1688-1718

10"x 23"

This watercolour has been used as the artwork for the debut album by The Shudders. I'm very pleased with it, some good reference definitely helped, so much so I've posted it to the Spectrum to be considered for annual 17. It's my first entry so fingers crossed! I've also attached the working drawing so you can my original composition. I pretty much went from the drawing to getting reference and starting on the final piece. Some of the highlights and pastel colours were worked back in with gouache at the final stage.

A Sneaky Peak

Here's a small sample of a painting I was working on in the last few days. Its actually part of the artwork for the new album by The Shudders. Once again the scan doesn't quite do it justice (I've got to find a scanning service in Swindon) and there's also a bit of a peculiar twist to the image which I guess will be revealed on the launch night next month.

More News:

Its official, I'm on Wikipedia!* I didn't write about myself in a drunken fit of egotism, honest, it's all down to the man who bought my Percy Vear painting last week. Unbelievably the grandson of Percy Vear (who is also called Percy Vear... is this getting confusing? ) walked into the gallery and purchased the watercolour, since then I've been in contact with Percy and he offered to link me into the Percy Vear page on wikipedia.

*Sadly the page was removed because I'm not a person of note which is very true. However the administrator accused me of authoring the article which is not true and then went on to insult me. Does his/her action deserve my response? No.

Even More News:

I was delighted last month to work on my first BBC Audiobooks cover. The piece was designed imitate the style of the previous cover illustrations - I will post the image when I can.

Progress Photo

13 hours of painting goodness yesterday. Hoping to get most of this piece done today.

Raymond Ching

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted something so apologies :-(

It seems a bit odd to have the first post in such a long time be about another artist's work but I have been meaning to show some photos for ages. Quite a while back me and Suzanne visited Bradford-On-Avon to see Aesop's Kiwi Fables by New Zealand born artist Raymond Ching. What an experience - 19 large luminous oil paintings accompanied by a fable set in a beautiful Barn in a stunning town on an amazing day! Have a look...

'Sea Of Ideas' Reworked

I decided quite recently that I would try and sell some of my experimental/personal pieces through the art shop I work at. However after scrabbling around I realised I'd lost the pencil drawing part for my degree piece 'Sea Of Ideas.' The piece used to show a nautical scene sprouting from my work desk but having lost that I quickly got down to coming up with something different. Shaun Tan was the inspiration, especially his 'Tales From Outer Suburbia' cover (the whole book is sublime, not just the cover). I prefer the retro television set, hopefully you do too?

Finally Finished 'Michael's Room.'

20" x 15"

A while back I posted a work in progress which was a pencil line drawing with acrylic wash. The idea being the acrylic would act as an under-painting as I applied reasonably heavy watercolour washes. With previous paintings my initial pencil work has disappeared when wet so the acrylic was there to hold the figures together and it worked! After the watercolour I then worked up the shadows and highlights with gouache.

I wonder if Michael's little sister managed to get Dolly's head back? (You don't ask that question everyday)

Old work

I was visiting the family and playing a blues fest last week so much of the work I wanted to get on with has ground to a halt. I finally sat down in front of my half finished painting Monday morning and then received a call with more work so can't complain!

However I can now post my latest editorial commission, the article was about leading clever people and the various personalities and skills you will have to deal with successfully.


After lots of revised roughs we finally settled on centaurs with over-sized craniums pulling a nerdy managing director on a chariot in different directions. This was to fit a double page spread.

Some more news: I SOLD A BINGLEY SECRET AT THE WEEKEND!!!! One down five more to go ;-)

Exhibition photos

Oooooo! Photos from my little exhibition at Jane Fielder's lovely gallery in Bingley. I haven't been there yet but I'm hoping to pop in this weekend (after a 5 hour train journey) and maybe answer a few questions posed by the 'Bingley Prosider.' I haven't even seen my paintings framed in the flesh yet so just that prospect is enough to get me overly excited and there is going to be a piece in the local paper 'The Keighley News' this week.

On another subject... me and Suzanne managed to finally get into the Banksy Exhibition at the Bristol Museum. We queued for 6 HOURS, that's how popular his work is in the UK, so obviously we were expecting some brilliant work. Unfortunately both of us were not hugely impressed, the purely original pieces like the ice cream van installations and some of the canvas works were really good little punky ideas but we felt most of it was 'statements for statement's sake.' Often you would look at a piece such as breaded fish fillets swimming in a fish bowl, get the gimmick/pun and that was it, a bit one dimensional. Dare I say it but the exhibition felt very college-like, 'hey stalagmites look like genitalia' - no joke Banksy actually makes a reference to that. Still glad we've seen it though.

Progress Photo 2

Here's the experimental under-painting. I started the colour work today but then had a load of promotional work to do for the exhibition:


There are six originals available to buy along with there individual poems, I've already had interest which is great and apparently the Bingley Prosider would like to do a piece on the exhibition. Fingers crossed things continue like this! :-)

Progress Photo

This is the final rough before I transfer it on to some stretched paper. There's a comical narrative in there which, with any luck will become apparent when I start working up some tonal values. I mentioned some experiments in my last post so I was thinking of firstly doing an under-painting in acrylic and then adding colour with watercolour and gouache - I got the idea from looking at C.F Payne's work. Can't wait to start this tomorrow!! :-D