Paintings

In this piece I returned to an old tradition of painting portraits of recognisable characters; in this instance a portrait of Maximus from the Fallout TV show. To make this piece more difficult for myself I painted this portrait without any guide sketch, instead skipping right to the rendering stage of the piece. I think that this method worked surprisingly well, though I became aware of how out of practice I was at painting recognisable portraits.

In this painting I attempted to capture the experience of fainting as I had felt it shortly before creating this painting. The sense of retreating into onesself and losing the ability to observe your surroundings is depicted by composing the piece with minimal negative space, to reduce the presence of the background, and by blurring the background into the portrait itself to make the distinction less obvious. A physically sickening feeling is represented with the choice of contrasting colours used in the portrait, with blue highlights placed next to more orange tones.

This study was an experiment in attempting to capture the properties of the surface of the water using minimal brushstrokes without getting lost in details. I painted both the swan and the water around it using the same brush, meaning that the brushstrokes were all the same size so the piece wouldn’t seem as if either part were less detailed than the other. Overall, I think that this piece was a success and that the water and the swan both work together in the same space.

This study was an attempt to practice drawing the focus of the viewer using specific colour choices. The background was painted using mostly flat colours or smooth transitions so that they didn’t draw the attention of the viewer, and the tower was painted primarily orange which was intended to contrast heavily with the mostly blue background. To draw the eye of the viewer up the tower, to the cross on the roof, the tower was painted with a gradient, where colours near the bottom of the tower were redder and the colours became more orange with height.

Another attempt at creating a study of an appealing landscape, this piece focuses mainly on the sky and the effects of light as the sun begins to set. The main element which drew me to this subject was the strange colour transition in the sky - rather than blue to purple to red, the sky blends the opposite direction, blue to yellow to red. I attempted to capture this transition using saturated, unblended colours which was mostly successful except for a very sharp transition between yellow and red.

I bought new paintbrushes to replace my old ones, picking the new ones based on what I thought I would need. It was only when I got home that I realised the new paintbrushes were exactly the same make and model as the old ones since they looked completely different to my well-used ones. I thought it would be interesting to try painting the new paintbrushes and the old ones to show the differences, but I also wanted the study to show the difference between how the paintbrushes performed. To achieve this, each paintbrush in the piece is painted with itself, and the background on each side is painted with the larger brush of each pair.

On a recent hike in the lake district I saw this very impressive sight - huge light rays shining through the clouds over an expansive landscape. I took on the challenge of attempting to capture this sight in a quick study! I’m not sure I fully captured how the illuminated rays scatter light through them, but I’m quite happy with how the landscape looks - it has more depth than my last attempt at painting a landscape in the lake district.

I visited Greece over a year ago, and while I was there I saw these strange buildings which didn’t seem to have any windows - perhaps a practicality for the hot weather? I wanted to exaggerate the oddness of these buildings when I painted this study, so I edited my reference photo so that the vertical lines of the buildings were parallel, rather than converging due to perspective. I’m quite happy with how this result turned out, but it made it clear to me that I would need some newer, less frayed brushes if I wanted to paint more highly angular subjects in the future!

I’m not very experienced with painting landscapes, and this study was an especially challenging one for me - it heavily features clouds, which I am not very good at painting, casting a shadow on the landscape. To simplify the cloud painting I treated them as being made up of opaque, roughly cubic shapes. I liked how this looked, so I leaned into it when detailing. To try and add some shape to the landscape, I included clear brushstrokes which followed each of the hills down, which I felt was especially effective in the foreground.

This is not the first time that I’ve painted fish, but it is the first time that I’ve painted fish which have been prepared for eating. It was a strange experience painting the interesting, pearlescent texture of fish skin over a fillet of fish rather than the shape of a whole fish. I’m a fan of this result! I think it turned out as a nice painting despite only being intended as a quick study.

In the last year I didn’t produce many new paintings since I was focused on more technical aspects of my art practice. This study was created to help me get back into producing quicker pieces more regularly so that I could iterate on my painting techniques quickly. I’m not very happy with how the painting itself turned out, but I hope that it can be the start of a period of artistic development!

Each year for my birthday I paint a self portrait, with the paintings in this series intended to track my personal changes as well as changes in my style over the years. This painting was inspired by a year filled with uncertainty, but rather than focus too heavily on the negative aspects I decided that the piece should represent perceverence in the face of change. Sometimes I may need a break from my painting to stop and reflect, but this moment will not last forever; at some point I will return to whatever I was painting before now.

A painting of some partially shaded rocks I saw at the bottom of a mostly dried up river when I visited Greece a year ago. I was inspired by the naturally vibrant colours and the contrast between the bright sunlight and the predominant shade.

An experiment with drawing the eye using the saturation of colours inspired by the light striking a building on top of some cliffs at Tyneside beach. I was very unhappy with this piece due to my lack of experience making appealing low saturation colour palettes. My dissatisfaction with this piece inspired me to create the painting “Greek Riverbed Rocks”, which I was much happier with.

This is a portrait I made of my friend drinking a pint! I was inspired to paint this piece because I liked the interesting lighting created by using flash photography, and it had also been a while since I had painted any portraits. For this piece I did no prep sketches and just let myself freely find a painting that I was happy with. The process of painting this piece was very relaxing, since I wasn’t trying to push myself too much and was just letting myself enjoy it.

This painting is an attempt to capture the personality of my friend in an expressive piece. He has very exaggerated body language and is a fan of collecting watches, so I thought it would be fun to paint him showing off his watches by wearing multiple at a time. One of the greater successes of this painting was that I managed to capture the unique aesthetic of each watch, making sure that they were clearly recognisable as part of his real collection.

This is the last painting from my series of landscapes from Ilfracombe. This painting depicts some interesting geological features that I saw while on a boat tour around the coast. This painting was an interesting challenge, since I wanted to make the colours appealing while still capturing the interesting forms of the cliffs.

The second in my series of paintings inspired by a visit to Ilfracombe. This painting depicts a series of rocks on a beach which were only revealed at low tide - earlier in the day these had been completely invisible. I was inspired by the interesting colours I saw on rocks that spent most of their time underwater.

This painting is the first of a series of three pieces that were inspired by a visit to the seaside town of Ilfracombe. This piece depicts the view from the main harbour. I was inspired to make this piece by a desire to get more practice painting vibrant and interesting landscapes. I also partially wanted to use it to test a new colour of green that I had just bought.

This is a portrait I painted of my girlfriend to make up for a less flattering study from life that I made earlier. This painting was inspired by a moment in the carousel scene from the film ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. By far the hardest part of this painting was attempting to make the lights in the background look blurred, since my work usually focuses on having large obvious brushstrokes. The background really tested my patience, but I’m happy with the effect it creates!

Each year for my birthday I paint a self portrait, with the paintings in this series intended to track my personal changes as well as changes in my style over the years. This year I wanted to paint myself in a casual setting in contrast to the first painting in the series, in which I was posed quite classically and formally. The painting is fairly simple and the resemblance to me isn’t as good as the previous, but I think that it represents me better than a more formal painting would.

This piece attempts to create meaning using the direction of the brushstrokes. All elements outside the self portrait are painted in brushstrokes that revolve around the mirror, intended to represent the repetitive cycle of a morning routine. The portrait is painted using exclusively vertical brushstrokes, intended to represent the sadness of experiencing a repetitive daily cycle.

In this piece I first began experimenting with the direction of brushstrokes; where previously my brushstrokes only existed to create detail, here I was trying to arrange them in such a way that it added to the result. Despite the wide colour variation, the result is still clearly a door knocker shaped like the head of a lion.

This piece was created to demonstrate how colour variation can be used even when the subject matter is made up of mainly black and white. The study is clearly a black and white magpie, despite the range of distinct colours that the feathers were painted in.

I don’t usually paint from life, usually working from photo references. However, in this piece I attempted to create a portrait painted from direct observation in the span of roughly two hours. It was an unusual challenge to paint a subject that was moving around, and I believe my inexperience with painting from life is apparent in the painting.

After a visit to a local cat cafe, I was inspired to create a painting of one of the cats, which is named ‘Poncho’. I thought it would be bun to create a more stylised, squishier painting of the cat to represent how soft it is, but I also tried to maintain the angry stare that Poncho keeps despite his softness. This painting was donated to the cafe where Poncho lives, where it lives to this day.

This piece was created to celebrate halloween, depicting two halloween creatures waiting at the door with sweets for trick-or-treaters. This painting was particularly fun, since the reference photos were of my (then) main hall, so I had to invent most of the haunted decor. I also enjoyed painting the ghost, which was based on a reference of me wearing a regular sheet, since it gave me the rare opportunity to attempt to paint a glowing fabric surface that casts light on the environment.

This piece was inspired by a trip to an aquarium, where I saw some piranhas that I was inspired to paint. I didn’t want this piece to only be a study from my photos, so I decided to add a bit of a backstory to the piece by including a half-portrait of my friend, which was a challenge since I was unable to take a picture of him underwater directly.

In this piece I was attempting to challenge myself to make a painting with a negative mood despite the main component of the piece being a bright yellow onesie of pikachu. In order to introduce moodier elements of the palette, I made use of plenty of green colours, but in order to maintain the vibrance of the yellow I employed unconventional colour transitions from yellow to purple to blue. I also attempted to introduce some depth to the piece by painting more distant parts of the piece to be greener than areas which are closer to the viewer, which I believe improved the moody atmosphere significantly.

This self portrait was created to experiment with a limited colour palette consisting of only dark blue, cyan and yellow paint. I wasn’t very precious with this painting, producing it in less than two hours, so the resemblance to me is fairly limited. I think that the experiment with the colour palette was a success, as I like the effect that was created.

This piece is an interesting one, since it was constructed from two distinct layers. The bottom layer consists of a bleary, blurred version of the painting with no distinct detailing. The top layer, however, is constructed from very brightly coloured, distinct brushstrokes which are used to add elements of the detail of the portrait without entirely concealing the bleak lower layer.

The still life is a genre of painting that I don’t create very often any more, though I find them very interesting and satisfying to create. In this piece, I was experimenting with how to make a still life vibrant without oversaturating the piece. The first layer was painted very classically, making it have colours and patterns that were true to life. The second layer consisted of fewer brushstrokes of very saturated, vibrant colours which were used to add detail and saturation to the piece.

In this painting I was attempting to explore the different types of colour blending - a soft transition from yellow to magenta at the top and a hard transition from magenta to blue in the middle. The smooth transition was not particularly successful, since I wasn’t able to make any orange or red that was a good midground between the yellow and the magenta, resulting in it looking a bit grey.

I usually prefer to paint from my own reference photos, which means that I don’t often get the opportunity to paint subjects that I don’t encounter in my personal life. Sometimes I am presented with a rare opportunity to paint something different. In this occassion, a trip to an aquarium enabled me to take my own pictures of a shark, which gave me a chance to create this painting. My painting is limited by the number of photos I was able to capture of the shark, but I think I was still able to construct a reasonable composition.

In this piece, depicting my dog waiting to be played with, I was attempting to practice painting ’noisy’ surfaces like hair and grass so that I could develop a shorthand for painting them effectively without excessive rendering. I definitely did not fully pull off this effect in this piece, but it was an important step in the right direction.

In this piece, I was attempting to create an appealing, colourful still life painting of relatively simple household objects. Some of my earlier paintings were highly realistic pieces depicting shiny household objects like kettles or plates, so this piece was a nice way to revisit the subjects I used to be interested in with a renewed, more expressive set of techniques.

I used to avoid painting complex backgrounds, generally preferring to paint either monotone or low detail representations of the backgrounds of my reference. In this piece, I was attempting to get some practice painting a subject existing within its environment, focussing on making the details of the stone and water appealing without distracting from the main subject.

Each year for my birthday I paint a self portrait, with the paintings in this series intended to track my personal changes as well as changes in my style over the years. In this piece my main focus was on depicting the colouring styles which I had been developing over the past year. The portrait is posed fairly classically, but has multiple different coloured light sources which are used to demonstrate the exagerrated and saturated colour palette of the piece.

One of my earlier attempts at painting landscapes, this painting depicts some mountains that I observed while travelling through the alps on a coach. My main focus of this piece was capturing the depth caused by the atmosphere while still maintaining enough detail that the shape of the mountains was obvious.

This piece was the last of a series of paintings which were focussed on capturing the likeness of the subject in which I would paint a recognisable actor in a specific role. In this painting, I depict Cillian Murphy as he appeared in Oppenheimer. The piece attempts to capture elements of the style of portraiture which was popular in the time period when the film was set, like a darker and more brown colour palette.

In this piece I attempted to create an optical illusion: a painting of two skulls which contains a third hidden skull. To see the third skull, the viewer must defocus their eyes and look through the piece until the two skulls appear to meet in the middle, at which point a third skull will appear that looks 3D. The effect is created by painting the same skull at very slightly different angles, to recreate the effect of each eye having a slightly different perspective.

This piece is part of a series in which I attempt to capture the likeness of well-known celebrities as they appear in certain roles. In this portrait I depicted Keke Palmer as she appeared in the film NOPE, utilising a colour palette constructed mainly from green and red paints.

It is often easy to forget that painting is supposed to be fun - we aren’t limited to only paint serious, academic pieces. Sometimes it’s nice to paint something just because you think it would be funny. This painting depicts one such subject, a photo of a dog holding flowers which I found to be silly and entertaining.

Background painting was never my strong point, which this piece depicts more than most others. This painting is based on a photo of a classical car which I took when walking around my university city, though I changed the colours to make the piece more interesting since the original car was beige-brown. The decision to make this car green and to paint the shadows with a magenta-blue gives the car an unintentional ‘joker-mobile’ colour scheme, but otherwise the car itself is fairly well studied in this piece.

The objective of this piece was to explore some more unconventional colour palettes, and is constructed from an unconventional colour scheme. Rather than blend the colours through the rainbow as expected, the ’natural order’ is ignored - yellow goes to light purple, then cyan, then red-purple. This unconventional colouring technique brings out the vibrancy of each colour and creates a very interesting piece.

Being unable to paint for extended periods of time is often something that frustrates me. In this piece, I express the combination of boredom and annoyance that is produced by me needing to take time away from painting to focus on exams at uni. The colour palette of the piece is very muted and gray, intended to express boredom, and the details are kept fairly simple due to the limited time I had to create this piece.

In this piece I attempted to construct the piece without drawing or painting the rough structure underneath, instead trying to build up a readable piece by painting blobs of colour as I saw them. The construction of this piece was assisted by the natural variation of ocean waves - I didn’t need to worry too much about how closely the result resembled my reference, leaving me free to construct an interesting piece.

This piece is part of a series of paintings in which I painted celebrities in well-known roles to practice my ability to capture appearance in portraiture. In this portrait, I have painted Harrison Ford as he appears in Star Wars. The time period of the film meant that the reference had a high saturation colour palette which was interesting to explore.

When this painting was created, I was often busy during the day with university work meaning that I would only have the opportunity to paint late at night, lit only by the light in my bedroom. In this painting, I attempt to represent the hazy, sometimes disorienting atmosphere created by painting late at night when lit by a non-ideal light source as well as the rapidness I needed to paint at in order to get much done with limited time.

In this experiment with perspective, I painted a skull so that it would appear correct from the angle of the camera that I recorded the painting process with, rather than the usual perspective of an observer. The decision to paint a skull was based on the original inspiration - a far more distorted skull which appears in the 1533 Holbein painting, titled ‘The Ambassadors’.

This painting belongs in a series of paintings in which I paint well-known characters to practice my ability to capture likenesses in paintings. In this portrait I depict Bryan Cranston as he appears in the show Breaking Bad, but with a twist. I created this painting with the canvas inverted so that I would be painting the portrait upside-down. Attempting to paint a portrait upside-down is an interesting challenge, since it is difficult to interpret human faces when they are the wrong way up. This most obviously manifests with the placement of the ears, which are clearly too high up on the head - a fact that I wasn’t aware of while painting.

A rare early example of a landscape, this painting depicts wind turbines as seen near the shore of a river. Due to my inexperience with landscapes, this piece has no particularly distinct characteristics when compared to my main body of work.

A clear example of the limitations on the time I had to paint in the past, this painting depicts a self-portrait that was painted within the space of one hour. The brushstrokes and construction of the piece are clearly made fairly sloppy by the introduction of this time limit, but the colours and structure are visibly apparent.

This piece is part of the series of character portraits, though taking a more zoomed out, full-body perspective on the subject, Viggo Mortensen as he appears in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. The zoomed-back perspective introduced more limitations than expected on how close of a match the appearance would end up being, resulting in a piece which could depict any number of characters in fantasy media.

This piece is a rare painting from my early works, in which the subject of the painting covers the entire area of the canvas. The piece has essentially no empty space, consisting nearly entirely of a shoal of blue-banded snappers. This painting was a very enjoyable one to make, since it gave me the opportunity to paint many slight variations of the same basic fish, and to experiment with how more distant subjects would appear behind the murkiness of the ocean water.

This painting is a simple study of a single tube of the paint I was using at the time - a Windsor & Newton Georgian Oils tube. Despite the simplicity of the piece, it gave me a good opportunity to practice reflective, unusually shaped surfaces.

This painting is not only the most seen painting in my series of recognisable character portraits, but is actually my most viewed piece ever, sitting at around 1.3 million views on tiktok. The portrait depicts Pedro Pascal as he appeared in the first season of the show ‘The Last of Us’.

This painting belongs in a series of pieces in which I painted portraits of well-known characters to practice my ability to capture the resemblance of a person. In this portrait I depict Michelle Yeoh as she appeared in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once.

This piece was produced for a student art competition at my university, which was based on the prompt ‘sanctuary’. I intended the painting to depict that the act of painting was a personal sanctuary, with the painting showing my perspective as I paint while still clearly placing me in the center of the piece. As an extra nod to the theme, within the painting I am painting a picture of a literal sanctuary - a church.

One of the earlier pieces in my series of popular character portraits, this painting depicts Jenna Ortega as she appeared in the show Wednesday on Netflix. This painting uses a highly limited colour palette, consisting only of blue and very slight purple tints.

Due to limited time and resources at this time, I didn’t often get the opportunity to study the human form from life. Instead, I often used to practice anatomy based on classical statues which I observed in art galleries. In this piece, I was attempting to make plain marble appear more interesting by introducing subtle colour variations across the surface of the statue.

One of my more controversial pieces, this work mocks the often highly consumerist nature of Christmas adverts. The intention was to parody advertising which makes use of this depiction of Santa Claus which was invented by avertisers, but it was frequently interpreted as mocking the concept of buying gifts, leading to the controversy.

In this painting I was attempting to apply techniques and elements which I had learned from a previous study of the style of Dishonored into a piece which also contained elements of my personal style. I think this study was a very successful attempt at investigating which elements of the studied style I liked and which didn’t fit with how I wanted to construct my works.

This was the first of a pair of studies in which I investigated the portraiture style which was used in the game Dishonored, to investigate which elements of the style I liked and inform how I wanted to continue painting in the future. In this piece, I attemted to apply the style of Dishonored to a study of an old photo. The main aim was to investigate the methods of colouring and structuring that were used in that style so that I could find out what elements of those works made them particularly appealing to me.

This is a simple study of a silver-eared mesia in flight, based on a photo which I found in a wildlife book. I was inspired to paint this subject due to the interesting angle and arrangement of the wings, as well as the dynamic yellow and black colour scheme.

This piece is actually a mixed media recreatiion of an entirely digital piece I had made earlier. The work is mostly painted, with a digitally introduced block of text beneat the main caption. This work attempts to parody advertisements which take advantage of women’s self-image issues to advertise products that will make them become closer to ‘perfect’.

In this painting of a horse, I was attempting to avoid stagnation in my style by constructing the piece using far more visible brushstrokes than I usually would at the time. This stylistic change created an interesting effect, which would go on to inform decisions that I would make in my style in the future.

In this study of a portrait found in a classical art reference book, I attempted to use only white, red, blue and yellow paints. This limitation made it harder to paint the piece, since I usually take advantage of a wider palette, but created some interesting visual quirks which wouldn’t be present if I had access to the full palette.

In this study of a classical portrait found in a reference book, I attempted to create an air of sadness by using a limited colour paletter constructed mainly from blue, yellow and very sparing red. I feel that the use of this colour palette creates a piece which is much moodier than it would be if it were presented using more realistic colours.

This piece is a simple study in which I attempt to make an appealing portrait using a palette mainly consisting of blue and brown. I don’t think this piece was particularly successful as the proportions of blue and brown are not well balanced, and the skin appears more gray than blue in many places.

In this quick study I experimented with painting an appealing portrait using a colour palette mainly consisting of green and brown, with sparing blue elements. The primary colour of the piece being green results in brown areas appearing fairly red, which made it possible to create a skin-like appearance despite using none of the colours which are usually present in skin.

In this piece I painted a study of a classical roman statue using a colour palette constructed from red, magenta and blue. The strong shapes of the statue reference made it much easier to construct the shape of the face and hair, and I think the mixture of blue and red areas of the face creates an interesting effect.

This painting was a relatively simple study which I created to get some practice at representing hands with unusual finger positions. I chose this pose in particular since the pinky finger points more toward the viewer than the other fingers, so it was a good opportunity to practice the perspective distortion of the fingers without making them just appear as shorter, stubbier fingers. Overall, I think that this piece was a moderate success.

In this piece I attempted to paint a portrait using a colour palette consisting only of green and magenta. The inclusion of magenta was intended as a way of ensuring that the portrait still resembled skin despite being made in an abnormal colour, but I feel that it didn’t work well with the green. The magenta was a far deeper colour than the green, resulting in all areas with minimal magenta appearing washed out and bland.

In this piece I attempted to create a portrait using a colour palette of only cyan and magenta. These colour work well together naturally, looking good when adjacent and mixing to create a darker colour that can add more depth, resulting in a very successful piece.

This piece was painted for day 32 of a project where I painted a new piece every day. In this piece I attempted to capture the complex structure of the seed pods with relatively large brushstrokes, which was an interesting challenge. I am particularly proud of the combination of colours used in this piece, with a nice combination of gentle purples and bold, blue shadows.

In this piece I attempted to capture the appearance of polished marble based on a statue which I saw in the Bristol Museum. This painting marked the 30th entry in a series where I attempted to create a new painting every day. I am particularly proud of the subtlety of the lighting and the gentle expression of the figure.

This piece depicts a copper statue which I saw at the Bristol museum. I painted this piece as the 29th entry in a series where I attempted to produce a new painting every day. This painting was a fun experience in attempting to capture the human form with a more unconventional material, exploring how the shiny surface effects how the human body is rendered.

This piece, the 28th entry in my painting-every-day series, was an attempt to paint a flower - a subject which I have historically struggled with. I think that this struggle is obvious in the painting since it is fairly difficult to tell what the subject of the painting is supposed to be. However, I was quite happy with the combination of colours and flowing shapes present in the piece; when separated from the context of what the original subject was supposed to be I think that this entry becomes a fairly nice abstract work.

This painting depicts a portrait of a turtle which I saw one day when visiting an aquarium, painted as the 25th entry in a series where I attempted to paint a new piece every day. I am particularly proud of the combination of colours used in the head of the turtle, giving the painting an appearance which is both realistic and painterly.

On the 24th day of my painting-every-day series I wanted to put some more effort into the backgrounds of my pieces, so I chose a reference picture with reflective water in the background. Although I think that the bush to the right of the duck is somewhat underdeveloped, I’m very happy with the rest of the piece and I think it pointed me in the right direction in terms of creating pieces which combined a main subject and an appealing background.

For the 22nd entry into my painting-every-day series I wanted to paint a tank which I saw in a military museum. There are elements of this piece which I’m happy with, for example the combination of colours in the rusted front segment of the tank, and the detail of the tank treads. Overall, however, I’m not very happy with this piece - I think a lot of the details are very hard to make out and that the background feels very rushed.

For the 21st painting in the painting-every-day series I decided to paint a staple of Britain; a bright red post box. I attempted to capture the vibrancy of the colour of the postbox by making it the only red element in the entire painting, with the background being primarily green and yellow to produce a strong contrast with the box. I think this piece was very successful and that it informed how I would go on to take advantage of contrasting colours to push vibrancy.

This painting of an old Lagonda was the 20th entry in my series of painting a new piece every day. I found this piece to be an interesting subject, with a nice combination of different materials and distinct, flowing shapes. I think that this piece was a great success, and that I captured the shapes and details of this fascinating car with an interesting set of colours.

For this piece I was interested in attempting to capture a relatively simple landscape in an interesting way using just interesting colour choices. This painting was the 19th in a series where I created a new painting every day. I think that this piece was a great success, and I am particularly happy with the contrast created by the lilac shadows which are being cast on the yellow wheat. I also enjoy the effect created by around half of the piece being the negative space of the sky, making the scene feel much larger and more open.

This painting was the 17th piece in a series where I created a new painting every day. I painted this piece of one of my pet chickents because I thought it would be interesting to attempt to represent the surface and colour variation of a chickens feathers. I ended up doing this using closely scattered, thin paint strokes in a range of different colours, which I think was a very successful technique. I think that this piece was let down somewhat by the background, since the colour appears too washed out and white compared to the colours of the chicken. Overall, however, I think it was a success.

This piece was the eighth in a series where I painted a new piece every day. I thought it would be interesting to paint some of the paint tubes which I used to create my pieces since I wanted to explore ways of representing printed surface details without representing them perfectly accurately. See if you can figure out what brand of paint tubes I was painting - bonus points if you can tell what colour they are supposed to be!

This painting depicts an old staple drink of mine during the time when I was working on this painting-every-day series! This piece was painted for the seventh day of this series. I enjoyed the experience of painting a metallic surface, though I found painting the text which wrapped around the surface to be a challenge. Overall, I think this piece was a successful part of this series.

On the fifth day of my series where I painted every day I created this painting of a cola bottle. This was a fun experience in attempting to capture multiple different types of materials simultaneously. The combination of reflective glass containing semi-transparent cola with a metallic lid and matte stickers made this piece a good exercise in balancing how different surfaces react to the same light.

This painting was the fourth in my series of creating a new painting every day. This piece was a good exercise in capturing a shiny but not entirely mirrored surface and how it interacted with the much more organic, fleshy surface of the strawberries. I think that some of the colours in the strawberries are not exactly what I was aiming for, but overall I think that this piece was very good practice.

This painting of bottlecaps was the third in my series where I painted a new piece every day. I thought that these bottlecaps were an interesting subject since they are an unusual metallic shape which is also instantly recognisable. I felt that this was a fun experience and that I managed to accurately capture the difference between plain and coloured metallic surfaces.

For the second day of my series of creating a new piece every day I decided to paint my boots. I was particularly interested in attempting to capture the greasy black material appearance. I think that this piece was very successful, and it came to be a foundational piece which I built my experimentation with particularly blue and purple palettes upon.

This is a favourite piece of mine depicting some rocks I saw on the beach during a visit to St Ives. I am particularly happy with the combination of browns and grays in the rocks, as well as the wet sheen created by the limited inclusion of some lighter colours. Some elements of the background feel less developed, showing the age of this piece and my inexperience with landscape painting at the time. However, I have long considered this piece as among my best.