Talking up a Storm

I am really warming up to my subject now. It is fascinating how familiar you get with the curl of a particular lip or crease of an eyelid.

In addition I am enjoying the laying on of paint to create the volumes and forms of the flesh and bone structures.

i do like watercolour - it is definitely the most wonderful paint to use, stroking it on boldly in layers to build up colour depth or sometimes more timidly in little stipples or even removing colour when it goes on in the wrong place or creates the wrong colour - but that of course is not so easy to do as the colour does not always come away successfully and you are left with a shadow.

Of course, as you remember, the 'happy accident' sometimes creates an effect that is better than you could have planned in the first place.

Though I admit. Really the desired use of watercolour requires confident and first time placement of the colour in order to keep it pure. That will still take a bit more practice.

The theme:

Of course the Stavanger summer has descended into an Irish one! Each weekend seems to be rainier than the last and my tan has almost faded back to the milky pale complexion which i arrived here with last year. I think that those clouds are playing on my mind. Waking up to grey mornings really does not improve my mood - especially when it is Monday. Every weekend I want to go for a nice relaxing bike ride, but every weekend the opportunity fades pretty quickly.

So you can gather it is raining again today and now the clouds have even found their way into my paintings. Still clouds can be pretty cool - very atmospheric.

And here is Victor in full flight giving a lecture on something. He doesn't normally point when he talks but i thought the finger pointing made it more emphatic and when you are talking up storm clouds like that you need to be quite forceful.