Chapel frieze

St Elvan's Church, Aberdare

Sketch of St Elvan's Church which now the trees have lost thier leaves, is actually visible from the town centre. Ink wash, oil pastel and watercolour and acrylic.

Chapel painting

Still experimenting with pen and wash to complete a chapel painting for the waiting room next door. Tried this with overlapping buildings without their roofs. Lines painted with brush and overlain with ink and watercolour washes. Will go for roofs on next study with more gradation in thickness of line.

St John's Church, Aberdare

A small sketch of the church using wax resist in white and colour, pale watercolour wash, ink and liner brush, biro and acrylic and watercolour. Cropped down original image considerably so little foreground.

Aberdare War Memorial

Sketch of view towards Victoria Square, wash, then watercolour underpainting, then ink contour drawing, then darker washes for shadows and opaque white acrylic for war memorial and Black Lion Hotel, then oil pastel.

Visit to Cardiff Museum Print Room

Booked to see Piper paintings and sketches in the collection. Didn't realise before how much Piper used resists in his work especially in the period we looked at 1940's-1950's. Resists seem to be wax crayon or oil pastel, often overlain with ink wash. Also saw a couple of 30's collages which are remarkable for their simplicity of form with brief ink lines to suggest structure. The papers themselves are not brightly coloured and allow the brain to fill in the remainder. This image is a sketch of a large painting by Piper which I have made to be 3x4 foot, acrylic on paper. This has a burnt umber wash and various layers of acrylic and inkpen.

It's Piper study week!

Here attempting to copy 2 sketches by John Piper. One of Portland in the rain(1954), the other of a church(1944). Both originals about 15"x20" and watercolour/ink wash overlain with opaque gouache and indian ink. Both limited colour range, Portland is probably mainly burnt sienna and grey and white, the church probably indian red, naples yellow and grey.