Past Paintings

When my family were preparing for our garage sale a couple of weeks ago I spent a lot of time in the loft sorting through things. I re-discovered a lot of my old art work. Here's a selection:

These paintings were made as an extra piece for my portfolio for my university interview.

I remember being inspired by the work of Vija Celmins who would draw pieces of paper and the image on them.

This piece was made after a trip to New York with college during my art foundation year. Usually we would have been expected to make some kind of art while we were there but all our bags got lost so we didn't have any materials. What a shame.

This is one of the many nudes I have from years of life drawing. I think this is my best one. Drawing in charcoal was kind of my jam.

This one was from a session at college when half way through the model grabbed her robe and left the room because she thought she was going to be sick.

It was pretty warm in the room.

This painting was part of my A level work in response to a set theme that I can't remember. Something that I interpreted as time passing. Probably something like 'transition'.

It's of my Grandma and looking at the face I don't think I could paint it any better now.

The same can't be said for those grapes... 

This was my GCSE exam piece which was also on a theme that could have been 'transition'.

Oy, those trees! I definitely improved when it comes to painting trees. I hope.

This was a support drawing for the project that culminated in the previous painting.

Clearly I didn't remember this drawing when it came to painting those trees.

This is another piece that I don't think I could do any better now.

And this is a painting from GCSE of jars of jam.

Cos why not!

Old Paintings and an Interview

First up, Tera Sue interviewed me about being an art student over on her blog.

Feel free to have a read. 

And now on to regular proceedings.

I usually show you guys new paintings, but how about some old ones.

I've been looking through the archives (archives = random folders dotted around the house) and picked out some beauties.

A fireplace.

I think this was the first painting I did with my new fancy set of watercolour paints. I was 10.

I painted it completely from my imagination. I know, impressive right?

And here is photographic proof of me doing the painting. Note the fancy set of paints.

I think a photo of me painting now would look a lot similar, same set up, except now I wear my paint shirt the right way round, not buttoned up at the back like a dork.

These two are still life painting from around the same time.

Get them to the Louvre. What masterpieces.

This one I actually am proud of.

I mean my parents framed it and it's still hanging in the house.

I was 14 when I did this using chalk and charcoal which I used to love using. Maybe I should pick it up again once my degree show pieces are all done and out of the way.

Oh, and it's a random javelin man from google. I have no idea why I decided to draw it.

If you want to see some more of my artwork from way back when then look here and here.

My Best Portraits

Before I made tiny things I used to paint. A lot.

You've seen a lot of my landscape paintings but I also used to do a lot of portraits. Infact at A level I did a whole project on portraits which I got full marks for. Boom.

So here are a few of the best portraits I've ever painted ever.

I got this painting professionally framed and it's currently hanging in my house.

I think I like the collar bone best. Is that weird?

Self portrait. There're quite a few of these but I like this one because it's a bit different.

This is my friend Stef and I think the painting really looks like her.

This is the first version of a few paintings of my Grandma that I did for A level.

This lady lived to be 101. Legend.

I love this fun painting of my friend Lizzi, and it was a lot of fun taking the photo to paint from.

This painting was done when we were 16/17 and she's got a lot more shoes now so maybe I should do an updated version with her entire collection.