A canvas from start to finish...

Hi all, it's been a while I know but it's been a busy month or so.

I have been keeping up with the painting and have joined artfinder to try and get some of these creations out there into the big wide world. This is a great way for me to gain some exposure whilst being able to continue concentrating on working in the studio. For those of you haven't visited artfinder go and check it out, you can follow me on here too. It is an art feast for the eyes and a brilliant find if you want to bring some original art into your home as there is a budget for everybody.

So today I thought I would let you in to my studio to see how I have been working over the Summer. It has been a mixture of collage, paint washes and stencilling. I have always wanted to produce some work featuring animals so I decided to set myself a task to create a series of canvases based on the animal theme. I tend to work on a few pieces at the same time so layers can dry and eventually I ended up with three finished pieces. The subjects I chose were a flamingo, giraffe and camel. I thought it would be fun to share the process of the flamingo canvas from start to finish. Recently I have been seeing other artists do the same and I find it fascinating. So here we go!

Above are the first few layers, sticking papers on and working with a selected palette of acrylic colours. I was also working on a collection of floral designs over the Summertime and you can see how some of these floral motifs creep into the canvases as I am working along. Intuitively I am picking out marks from the collaged papers and incorporating these in too.

I practised sketching the flamingo in my sketchbook for a while to get warmed up and eventually transfered him onto the canvas using tracing paper. I then inked him on with a cream coloured acrylic pen for a definitive finish.

Here are the three canvases almost done.

I spent time switching between working on the flamingoes and on the background and eventually the flamingoes came to the foreground. This is when the piece started to come together. The right side was looking a bit busy so I made this disappear a little in to the background - see above and below - and this helped to create a more balanced painting.

Above we have the final painting and that of the other two below. They are now available to buy from artfinder or from my etsy shop.

I hope you have found this post interesting. Please feel free to leave any comments below.