Am struggling to update the blog at regular intervals but here I am at last!

I have been occupied painting a couple of early Christmas commissions which obviously I can't post on here until much nearer to 2011, suffice to say the commissions have taken priority and I have not had a lot of spare time to work on the tiger, but at least he now has the basis of two eyes ;-)

Local summer exhibitions are in full swing and I have been very lucky with sales of originals............"Morning Glory" a pastel painting of some local sheep in a sunny meadow, sold in the first few minutes of the preview at the BDAG exhibition in Battle on Friday so fingers crossed that my luck continues this way for the rest of the summer.

New Tiger painting

Last week kicked off well with the sales of two paintings "Ploughing" and "Indepenence" at a local exhibition, I then managed to complete the portrait of "Gertrude" which left me with some space and a free day on Friday.

I decided to unleash a new pastel painting of a tiger, having taken lots of very useful big cat photographs during the exhibition at Port Lympne at Easter I have been itching to utilise some of them ever since.

Initially I intended to do a medium sized painting, but got stuck in on a large sheet of pastelmat and now have a much larger (almost lifesize) painting to get to grips with :-)

My eyes refuse to focus after a painting session of about 2 hours so will need several sittings to complete this one!

This is the progress made over the first two sessions

Phew finally finished "Gertrude"

This one has been occupying my easel and developing very slowly over the last few weeks!

Life has been so hectic for me lately that I have struggled to find enough time to settle and work on it.

Although I enjoy graphite I find it very labourious and time consuming, taking many, many layers to build up the various depths of tone and I am not good at leaving and coming back to work on a drawing without losing motivation, I like rapid results and guess thats why I enjoy working with pastels so much.

All's well that ends well though and today I managed to shut myself away with a handful of motivation and finally completed this one..........phew!

Now I have an empty easel just waiting for a new occupant, looking forward to tomorrow :-)

Summer exhibitions

I apologise for the recent lack of input (life has thrown me a few curved balls of late)

At the time of writing I am battling against an untimely attack of shingles and suffering from the effects of the medication more than the illness!

I have kept myself busy getting paintings ready for several local summer exhibitions and am hoping for some luck in one or two juried shows.

I was disappointed to learn that my painting "security" didn't make the grade for the Society of Equestrian Artists exhibition but "you can't win 'em all" as they say, so onward and upward with fingers crossed for next year ;-)

This weekend brings the annual exhibition in aid of the local hospice and as usual I will have a few works on sale there so hopefully I will be feeling better and able to pay a visit.

Meanwhile the painting above is one I completed this week during my enforced confinement, it is a local scene currently festooned with beautiful wild poppies, great for a first outing for some of my lesser used pastels.