Fresh Off the Easel!

As the oranges and russets of Autumn creep in it was time to get this veridian orgy off the easel and here it is in all its lush greenness! 

Soul Seeking Sanctuary

I really enjoyed playing with this even though all those leaves took forever. 

To give you an idea of the size of this (36cm x 80cm), here it is with my ''little piggies'' to help you get the size! 

When looking at paintings online I hate it when the size of a painting isn’t given. For me size definitely matters a lot! I see what I think are fabulous paintings and in my head I've visions of these fab, large works and then I find they're tiddly little pictures. This is of course personal preference, not really a fan of working small myself, I don’t like wee paintings. 

At art school we were sent to see a Samuel Palmer exhibition, Palmer was a landscape painter of the romantic period,  his paintings often have a mystical quality that I like and unusual compositions . All great expectations, we arrived in Edinburgh and there were these huge man-sized gold frames with pristine passepartouts and in the middle were postage stamp sized drawings and paintings, you needed a magnifying glass to see. What a let-down! 

On the other hand Jacques-Louis David's ''The Coronation of Napoleon'' in the Louvre was a revelation; having viewed it often in art history books and then to stand in front of it in all of its 6.5m x 10m was gobsmacking. How did David know where to start? How many tubes of paint did he need? Did he ever get fed up, it took 2 years to finish, I wonder how often he cursed himself for ever starting. One of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time but half way through mehhhh! 

Now it’s time to start something new, one thing is certain, whatever it is it won’t have the humongous proportions of David's masterpiece and for one simple reason, Sennelier don’t make Pastelcard in that size!