Here's the latest - all done over the last couple of weeks:-
10) Rhino Neal - I did consider painting another elephant, after enjoying making the acrylic painting a few weeks ago. On reflection, though, I decided that variety is the spice of life, so went for this rhinoceros.
11) Goldfish. I was really pleased with this one because I worked loosely and extremely quickly. As a result the different yellows, oranges, reds and golds all blended rather well. This painting, start to finish, less than 15 minutes.
12) Dancer. In last year's challenge I painted a pair of Flamenco dancers. This time I thought about ballet. I like the pose, even if it is possibly slightly exaggerated.
13) Chanticleer - Time to do another living creature, and this time a bird. Chanticleer is the cockerel who is the main protagonist of Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale in "The Canterbury Tales". It's an anmal fable, which may well have been taken from Aesop originally. As for this painting - a curate's egg. Good in parts.
14) Summertime. I really like this one, since there's no part of it which I look at and think - hmm, haven't done that as well as I could. The only problem with it is I can only get awful scans of it, which is why I'm using this photograph, which at least gives you an idea what it looks like.
15) What the Dickens. Time for another monochrome blue portrait, this time of one of my favourite writers. I mean, it does look like Dickens, but there was something about it which was bothering me when I finished it, but I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. Then I realised, the eye on the right of the painting - it's just too big. It's a shame. This makes this one close, but no cigar.
16) Salisbury Cathedral. High time for a building, and they don't come a lot finer than Salisbury Cathedral. Shame I can't say the same about this painting. What can you say? Workmanlike, but rather uninspiring. Let's move on.
17) Dance - This was to meet the prompt in Sketching Every Day. The body is Fred Astaire's. The face was meant to be as well, but you know what? It looks a lot more like Dean Martin to me. Still, not a bad effort, and this one was done in the space of about 20 minutes at art group.
18) Pint - Which left the rest of the time to make this old codger. I really liked the original photograph, ad was eager to do a real face. Ach, I like the face and the pint - but the grey at the back of the head just don't wanna work. It's a shame
19) Dog Walker - Colour wise this full figure painting works a lot better. I didn't go overboard painting in the man's features, because it didn't need it. Quite a nice piece of work - happy with this one.
20) Lisbon Almost quite good, but not quite. Too many thick black lines around the tram itself. Shame, because I rather like that I've done with the van and the cars on the right of the picture.
21) Ginger Tom. I love cats. I'm currently owned by a black and white cat, and a black cat. I love them, but they're not colourful enough for what I wanted to do. So I made this painting of a rather nice ginger cat with tabby markings. I'm quite pleased with this.
22) High Hurdler. One of my paintings from last year's challenge was of Sir Roger Bannister. I wanted to do another athletics subject, and thought that this one of a 110m hurdler clearing one of the hurdles might work rather well. I think it's not badly executed at all, and I really like the way that the green blends with the blue and the yellow on the gear the guy is wearing.
23) World War I Tank. I am fascinated by the tragedy of World War I, and read a very interesting book recently about the British tanks - first used in the Battle of the Somme, and their crews. So this is why I chose this. I used monochrome blue because it gives that feeling of age to it for me.
24) Michelangelo's David. I fancied doing another full face, and another piece of sculpture. This encompassed both. Like this.
