Arty Hearty Hearts

With the post of 'Open Your Heart' on Sunday I thought you might be interested to see how this started it's life, normally with Impossimals they get a final sketch but because these were personal pieces I wanted a more fluid approach so I just worked from this little 2''x2'' sketch.

From this I then used charcoal and sketched it again directly onto the canvas, as you can see I also added quite a bit of extra detail and picked out all the shading.

This was then sprayed with a fixative and left to dry, once that was complete I could then begin to paint over the top, I started with the background and worked my way to the foreground, quite a rapid process once I had began.

See how the hearts are starting to 'lift' out of the canvas, the rest of the painting took about two weeks with the glazing and although it's only a small 20''x20'' it looked very detailed when complete.

Today though I have finished, yes finished the cake and it looks good enough to eat, yum!

Would You Like A Flake With That?

Back to painting the cake this morning and with 60 little 100's 'n' 1000's to paint it was going to be a long, long day...

Still I do get to finish my flake, artfully stuffed in the side of this chocolaty cup cake, getting the colour right was a different matter as flakes contain an unusual amount of non-chocolate colouring so I had to throw in plenty of orange and yellow to get the desired colour and when the final glazes go on it should look good enough to eat.

My palette got a bit messy halfway through as I used colour after colour on the little cake decorations, the 60 I had to paint took me the best part of three hours until I was happy with them and I now know that I am within one day of finishing this painting.

Hurrah!

And Now For Something Completely Different

Here's a couple of paintings you will not have seen before, they are from my 'free' painting period when I completed 'Loss Of Innocence' as you can see they are quite different from my usual Impossimals.

One Day, Some Day, Every Day
©2009 Peter Smith

Open Your Heart
©2009 Peter Smith

Ooops

A couple of things I forgot...

1. 'I Do Cake' will feature in my 2011 calendar
2. The Collectors Club accepts worldwide registrations

:-)

Linga Longer

Well, I managed to get through last night unscathed even though we had the 'big' firework to contend with which was actually quite entertaining after I had got over the dash away from the fuse (I ran away far too fast, a bit more of a primeval dash I'm afraid) and this morning I awoke with all my fingers and toes so I'm getting over my firework fear.

Back in the studio and the continuing saga of my final two for submission to WG, these are taking and *age* I don't know if its the shorter days or that I have done too much painting this year but they are both dragging out far, far longer than I had anticipated. My enthusiasm for the paintings has not waned it's just I will be glad to finish them and with at least another three days work left it looks like I'm stuck with them a little while longer yet.

'Bother!' said Pooh as Piglet exploded.

Me and fireworks go back a long way, from being chased by a jumping jack in my early years and nearly getting a flame shower from a Catherine wheel I have never really got on with them since so this year I decided to confront my fear and purchase a modest box of fireworks. I say modest but even the smallest box scared the life out of me but after seeing a buy one get one free offer I fumbled for my money in boyish excitement and made my purchase of which now, when I have got home, looks like a small military arsenal, even more worrying is the 'free' item. A 2 foot by 1 foot square of explosives, 48 fireworks lit by one fuse with the ominous 'stand at *least* 25m away'.

Ooops, looks like after tonight I will just be a greasy spot on the bottom of a five foot crater, still the rest don't look too bad, with names like 'Ginger Snap' and 'Turkish Delight' they are positively begging to be lit and Oooo'ed and Ahhh'ed at. Strangely they all have the same caution on the back, 'May Omit Showers Of Sparks', I thought that was the whole point?

Hmmm, not to worry, anyway here's the continuing battle between the takeaways in my area, since my last takeaway post we have had another five menus but this one proudly boasts 'Probably The Best Takeaway In The Area', yes, but you still do pizza, kebab and burgers don't you, not very fresh is it?

No Sir, shall I go away again?

I think you better had...

Woosah

I was up at 6:00am this morning trying to fix all the collector club registration problems, the amount of registrations coupled with a dodgy account setting tested my coding patience a little and it took me until 9:00am to find the root of the problem. It's now fixed so you can register without any problems (hopefully ;-D ) but for the rest of today I need to make a big colour chart of all my new acquisitions and separate the paints into transparent, semi-opaques and opaques, each shown as a little smeared blob on a canvas with the number neatly written underneath - very rock and roll...

Should keep me busy for most of the day!

Registration Problems

The Collectors Club Registration is suffering an overload at the moment, normal service will resume as soon as I find a large hammer.

Sale Of The Century

My paint stock was looking a bit sad this morning and needed stocking up, the oils were down to their last squeeze and some of the acrylics that I use for under painting were looking a bit dogeared so I decided to visit my little art shop that stocks all my goodies. It's a strange place, a mixture of art, toys, wooden pens and dust but it carries some of the most marvelous top paints and quite often is the source of a good 'deal'.

But today must have been my lucky day as the deal to beat all other deals was waiting for me, eight boxes of professional 75ml Talens acrylics for... wait for it... £300!

I know that it sounds rather steep for tubes of paint but this stuff is one of the best and with a quick glance at the boxes it looked like there was well over 200 tubes in there and between £3.50 and £8 a tube I was a winner but it was only when I got home I realised how big a winner.

Once I had laid them all out they looked like this...

...and a quick count gave me 364 tubes of 75ml, the entire range with at least five of each colour RRP on all this would be well over £1000. Wow! I thought to my self as I selfishly stuffed them into the painting cupboard like Golem guarding his ring (that sounds a bit rude I know but how else do I put it?) what will I do with it all?