And now for something completely different ....

SOLD

OK! I lied ;-)
This is another 'trompe l'oeil' (fool the eye) done on a 8 x 8 inch three quarter inch thick 'Blick Studio' panel (these panels have a textured surface but I sanded it smooth). Yes, it is just a flat surface ;-)
It works a lot better in real life as I just can't get the photo to convey the real impression of depth. Does anyone have a really expensive Nikon digital SLR they don't need anymore? ;-)

New Stuff ...

Yes, a long time between postings but you get three for the price of one this time - and only two of them are lemons :-)

I have had some commissions recently that I've been working on so I have been keeping busy but I have been rather neglectful of the blog. I also feel that there have been too many lemons posted so I haven't posted all of them, but they have proved so popular and everyone keeps asking me for them so I can't get away from them - anyway, I like painting them so much ;-)
I have some new non-lemon related themes on the go at the moment so if all goes well this may be a lemon free zone for a while :-)

These three new paintings are all oil on panel and I have decided to try them on eBay just to see if it will work for me.
Just click the links if you'd like to take a look.
Lemon and knife - 8 x 6 inches
Jug/milk - 12 x 9 inches
Square lemon/glass - 12 x 12 inches

ALL SOLD 

Did I mention that I also paint lemons ;-)

12 x 9 inches, oil on Gatorfoam panel

I was asked to do a commission based one one of my older paintings with lemons refracted in a glass of water and thought I would do a small series of them as I love the distortion and discontinuation of the lemons behind the glass. This is the second (haven't got a photo of the commission yet) and there will be at least one more :-)
I used walnut oil and Venetian turpentine as the medium on this one.

Greeting Cards

I have decided to try a few of my paintings as greeting cards and these are the only ones that I have decent high resolution images of at the moment. Unfortunately I wont be able to re-photograph my older works that have sold :-( I guess this will have to be a future enterprise and maybe I should design some specially.
If anyone is interested you can see them here: RedBubble

Tangerine dream

12 x 9 inches, oil on Gatorfoam panel
SOLD to Ryan Gallery Las Vegas

I did a smaller version of this about a year back without the knife (which is on the cover of the Blick catalogue this year) and just wanted to enjoy painting a tangerine again but using walnut oil this time.
I have started buying unrefined walnut oil from my local supermarket and 'washing' it myself to clean it.
You do that by putting distilled water and walnut oil (50/50) in a clean glass jar, give it a shake and leave it to stand in the sun for about three days. The water pulls the impurities out of the oil and so you are left with oil at the top, mucilage (the impurities) in the middle and the water at the bottom.
Then I carefully extract the oil into another clean glass jar with a pipette leaving behind the mucilage and water to throw away. I then leave the oil in the sun for a further 3/4 days (with the top not on too tight to let a little air in) which lightens the colour quite a lot.
if it was good enough for Da Vinci, it's good enough for me ;-)

Apparently, walnut does not yellow as much as linseed and my next step is to press my own oil from the millions of walnuts cluttering the garden each year.
I still add cobalt drier to speed up the drying time as walnut takes longer to dry than linseed.

Leaving on a jet plane

16 x 12 inches - Oil on Gatorfoam
SOLD to Ryan Gallery Las Vegas

This is my Winter hat and an old suitcase that I store old video tapes in (so, two lots of antiques ... if you don't include me that is ;-)
I like doing these retro scenes so I may hunt out some more objects that I can use in the junk shops around here.
More lemons and tangerines coming soon - so no surprises there (I'm self indulgent, what can I say!).