Portrait of Christian Cavanagh

Oil on canvas 16" x 20"

Private commission.

Phraya Nhakon Cave Pavilion

Oil on Canvas 24" x 16"

Oil painting of the Pavilion in the Phraya Nakon Cave located in Thailand’s Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, almost 300 kilometres south of Bangkok. Built for a visit by King Rama V. in 1896. He stopped here on a travel from his summer palace back to Bangkok.


This involved a lot of glazing using liquin as the glazing medium in order to paint the beams of light over rock and trees. Mostly done for fun and the challenge.
 

The Messenger painting

Oil on Canvas 20" x 16"

An oil painting based on a photo called "The Messenger" by Sebastian Kisworo.
This was an exercise in transposing a new colour palette onto an existing colour palette while trying to maintain the relationship between tonal levels. I've added a story into the composition by adding a sand snake in the path of the horse and a mountain village in the background which also help balance the extended vertical ratio of the canvas.

Painting studies

I've started some painting studies from the great film 'Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
' by Ki-duk Kim 

1. Oil on Canvas 206mm X 114mm

2. Oil on Canvas 206mm X 114mm

Desert Painting

Oil on Canvas 24" x 18"

Painting of Camels approaching the pyramids and sphinx that closely based on a photo by Jovelino http://1x.com/photo/43091/ I just added the Sphinx and Pyramid to the composition and adjusted the colour palette.

I took this on as a study in levels and subtle hues. Balancing the hue shifts of the sands while retaining their levels proved quite tricky because of the incredibly small differences in the colour steps. I found that the darker levels where much more forgiving but the bright sand areas in the centre around the sphinx and pyramid required a lot of controlling the mixing. Any kind of minute colour pollution ruined the colour mix so keeping your brushes clean and the turps clean was essential. Forces you to develop good painting practices :)

In from the rain

Oil on Canvas 18" x 24"

Commissioned oil painting. Portraits not being my forte, I was quite pleased with how this turned out.

Eyjafjallajoumlkull Eruption - oil painting

Oil on Canvas 24" x 18"

Finally finished this commissioned painting of the Eyjafjallajoumlkull eruption, photo by Gunnar Gestur Geirmundsson. Yep, the famous eruption that grounded so many planes in mid 2010.

Digital Painting - Snow landscape

original size 4921 X 3508 pixels

close up @ 100%

This painting was done a while ago, and printed onto canvas. It was done in both Painter and Photoshop. I wanted to test how natural I could get the brush marks to look and this was the best result from all the tests that I did. It looked even more natural when printed onto canvas, giving it that canvas texture. The only thing missing was the thickness you get from traditional paint.

Rangdum Monastery, Ladakh

 Acrylic on canvas. 24"x20"

Close up of monastery

It's based on a photo by Olivier Föllmi (one of my favourite photographers) http://www.follmispirit.com/
I changed the backdrop for mountains in Nepal although the monastery is on the Tibetan plateau in Ladakh, India, sshh! artistic license.

Hunter S. Thompson - tonal sketch

Acrylic on canvas
20" x 24"

Painting sketch

I made this from some left over paint on the palette on a scrap of primed fabriano.

Acrylic on fabriano

Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe - oil on canvas 24" x 20"

Commission for a wedding gift. I found it really difficult to photograph this painting accurately, not helped by the fact that I coated it with a gloss varnish. This is close though I lost some of the richness of the paint and some of the mood, like any photo of an oil painting.

Banner painting

Just though I may aswell post this old painting I did. As you see it was used for the banner of this site. I did it to play around with painter for the first time. I think it was painter 9, not sure on that one.

While searching through old work

While looking through old work I came across these paintings. Couldn't find any large images of these. My guess was I lost them when I had that harddrive failure way back. Damn!, lost a year a halfs work with that hard drive, including all the commission oil paintings I did (which I cant get again as they were sold off). But on the bright side at least I found these two images. Sorry they're so small.

Commuinion girl - 596 x 907mm - Oil on Canvas

Sea scape - 305 x 406 - Oil on Canvasboard