I am a self taught artist, currently living in Royston, Hertfordshire, UK.
My grandfather was an accomplished water colour painter and he was an inspiration to me when I was a young boy. Over the years, I have visited most of the major art galleries and churches in Europe and USA. My favourite is probably the National Gallery in London. I go there often to see my “old friends” and to gain inspiration for my own work.
I have also studied the history of art.
Like many amateur artists, I did not start painting until after I retired in 1999.
After a few years struggling to paint rather wishy-washy water colours, I transferred to acrylics to achieve more powerful effects.
Here are some of my paintings
For the colourful paintings, I prefer to use the “printer” colours; Process Cyan, Process Magenta and Process Yellow. These colours give a good range of greens, violets and purples as well as the primary colours.
To create a really vivid orange I mix Cadmium Red Hue with Process Yellow; Yellow Ochre and Process Magenta provide the basis for skin tones.
For the really dark areas I use Deep Violet. When I want to achieve an “Old Master” effect, I glaze the entire painting with transparent layers of Burnt Sienna. This also helps to “warm up” the painting.
Some of my more recent work is painted in Black and White. I was inspired to try this by Gerhard Richter’s powerful work from the 60’s. I use Paynes Grey and Titanium White for these paintings. They are both very opaque colours. I use two brushes for this style of painting; one to apply blobs of paint and a second brush (slightly damp) to move the paint around; to blend it and create texture. Without the need to worry about colour, I am able to paint in a looser manner with more expressive brush strokes.