Ltd edition prints.. and other things

A while ago I did some work through a fine art printing company, http://www.bucksfineart.comBuckingham Fine Art Publishers are an on-line company selling both original paintings and limited edition prints. I liked the idea of working with thempartly because of the quality of their prints, which use the giclee process (see http://painting.about.com/cs/printing/a/gicleeprints_2.htm for more info) and partly because of the quality of artists they cover: Fletcher Sibthorp, Christine Comyn, Mark Spain...I first worked with them a few years back, producing a set of oil pastel drawings of a friend, Janet. The people at BFA, for reasons best known to themselves, wanted her to be called Jeanette and prints on-line are under that name.. for clarity, she's Janet..

"Janet" Oil Pastels

After this I was asked to produce another set of figures, this time on system, using painter software. I wanted these images to be evocative but partially abstract and was pleased to be able to experiment with them digitally. They were again distributed through BFA, but seem to appear on different websites now; I keep seeing them in on-line galleries I've never heard of..

'Figures" Painter Software

I liked the feel of these system based images and the process of working digitally on them, but wanted to carry on and produce oil paintings of them which I then did, here's one below:

'Deep Gold' Oil Painting

In commercial fields I spend much more time these days working on system as opposed to 'traditionally'. . it can be a very expressive process and has many advantages over traditional media: speed is one, the ability to make amends easily - infinitely forgiving of mistakes - and it's also much quicker to deliver to clients on tight deadlines.Producing pixels doesn't have quite the thrill of working with paint though.. painting is a physical process, as much as anything I love the 'feel' of paint. For the above, the digital files served really well as visuals from which to produce paintings.... it's lovely to be able to experiment in colourand composition in this way, making 'painless' mistakes. The software is wonderful; Photoshop, Illustrator and especially the more organic Painter... but it's ultimately no substitute for the physicality of pushing paint around canvas..

Work Ongoing

Here's a look at two paintings I'm working on at the moment.