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Thursday 10 May 2012

Something new

For all my followers, (and I really appreciate your support)  I thought I would add something on the blog today that has not been seen anywhere else to date.
This is a commission I was given by a friend of mine.  It is my loose watercolour version of a black & white photograph of his daughter proudly holding her infant brother.  So this is the first view of  one of my paintings.  Up until now I have been displaying old work.
I am self taught as a watercolour artist and my approach was probably all wrong.  I decided to work with the darkest tones first - quite the opposite of textbook approaches to portrait painting.  The girl's hair blended into a dark background in the original photograph, so I kept that effect.  It creates a strong diagonal composition which is echoed in the position of their features.  The bottom left portion of the painting is kept pretty simple and doesn't draw the eye down.
Hope you all enjoy this, and I hope Marc does too!

8 comments:

  1. Brian - Fabulous and very much you at your best. I would be more than proud to have this on my wall.

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  2. Thanks Laura. That was quick!!!

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  3. Love it Brian. You have done an outstanding job of self teaching. Sometimes I think the intent is as important as technique.

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  4. It is really lovely, Brian - so much expression and emotion - beautifully painted. D

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  5. This is special Brian and am sure they loved it. There is a artist called Jake Winkle who works in exactly the same way as this, from dark to light and he does some lovely work just as you have here....

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  6. Thanks Judith. I will look him up.

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Thanks for taking the time to look and comment.