Traditional Gesso
Working with traditional gesso is a labor of love for myself, using traditional materials, rabbit skin glue, and French white chalk, to create a ground that is a luxury to work and paint on. Every ground I create through this method will give varying finishes that have tiny imperfections on the surface, every ground […]
Process – Stripy Ribbon Painting
Starting out with handmade gesso panels, made with traditional materials, and sanded many times to achieve a porcelain finish to work on. With a very thin coat of umber and walnut oil rubbed on with a rag and left to dry. More about traditional gesso making here. These handmade gesso boards are a dream […]
Studio Snippets
A look around my workspace, collected and found objects stored safe for another day, blue colour palettes, antique frames gifted from a friend in Italy, colour swatches and more colour palettes. A whole world to get lost in.
Dreams
Dreams usually inspire my thoughts in some ways, and they can be a source of brilliant ideas, I recently had a dream about a dormouse visiting me, and we had a wonderful time together in the dream, she was also sleeping in a bed of flowers. She was still sleeping and I did not want […]
Stripy Ribbon – Pencil on Gesso
A new stripy bow drawing, again on my traditional handmade gesso panel in oil pencils.
Dusty pink bow
A small sketch study of a dusty pink bow on gesso paper. Working in layers from pencil, underdrawing to colour layers to achieve depth in the final painting.
Colour Palettes
Wanting to know more about colour, I was recommended to experiment with colour palettes and see what the colours I already had could make, turns out it was quite a lot of colours. It was great to see what I could make from what I already had. This was a little overwhelming on where […]
Postcard Set
I have produced a collection of postcard prints from the ribbon drawings I have on my gesso boards. Each postcard is printed on 200 GSM silk board in a matte finish. You can purchase them here from my shop.
Ribbon Gesso Process
Every drawing and painting starts with handmade gesso boards, with many many layers of sanding and a final light coat of umber rubbed into the surface. You can read more in detail about my traditional gesso here. Let us start in a sketchbook and get some basic shapes down and work on a composition we […]
‘Night-time’ process
‘Night-time’Oil on wooden panel, on traditional gesso. 4 x 6 inches. This painting was a small experiment in the process of working on stripes from an underpainting. I used a raw sienna for the underpainting, with a flake white.
Ribbons and Bows
To get back into a good drawing habit of actually looking and observing I wanted to start sketching something that I felt out of my comfort zone, and I felt fabric and silk bows were always so wonderfully portrayed in paintings. I wanted to see the values, and contrasts of the folds of fabric. […]