I liked the mystery of this image. The original photo was even darker and more mysterious. I decided to add figures and reveal them a bit more and do it in a blocked style.
The actual place is a cafe on Beachy Head; the same headland painted on my previous post.
Other landscapes and seascapes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
Last week we were showing some friends around Liverpool and stopped for refreshment. I couldnt resist this study in light and shade at one of the city’s cafes.
Other townscapes and Liverpool paintings are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
We went out to a bar in Liverpool the other night with some friends and enjoyed a few drinks and a little music. I thought that I would paint the scene and here is the first go. I may yet make some of the background colour more definite as it looks like a yellow mist is descending as it did after the fourth bottle of wine.
Other Liverpool scenes and figurative works are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I started again with the painting I posted on my last blog and here is the result. It is a little rough around the edges but it now has the feeling of a mad hatter’s tea party – not that I’m calling my step-brother mad for one instant – he could be reading this. I thought that the first version was too static and it needed something, so along came a bit of humour and action. I did consider just altering the last offering but changing the poses and adding the bottle and hands blocked out bits I wanted to keep – so it was start again.
I will allow time for reflection and then perhaps refine a few bits, but I feel John will appreciate this version a little more or dislike it a little less.
Other paintings for sale are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
This is John, my step brother. He gave up running a shopping mall and, with his wife, opened up an Filipino/English Cafe. She is from the Philippines and her son, DJ, is in the background, though he is soon off to a job in Japan.
When I was on my painting course, last week, we popped in for lunch and I thought I might do John a painting – though I think it needs to be livelier and more quirky than this.
I do like his pork-pie hat which seems to be fixed permanently to his head and the cafe counter is covered in paper and paraphernalia, so this may be another project I will be doing again. The second goes are piling up.
Anyone got a spare lifetime that they can let me have?
Other paintings for sale are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I started a version of this last week whilst on duty again at the exhibition I was part of. I don’t think it is as successful an image as the painting I did of the dog walkers on my last stint at the gallery, but I do love the impatient anxiety of the woman trying to catch the waiter’s eye and the nonchalance of her husband, given charge of the lapdog.
In the gallery I followed my sketches and did a version of this but by the middle of the afternoon I realised I had the scale wrong. So the painting displayed above was one I did at home. The half completed first attempt is below. As you can see I beefed up the figures and pulled in the scene.
As for the exhibition. In the end I sold 3 paintings which was a good result as far as I am concerned. Today I entered 4 paintings for a juried exhibition, so I wait to hear the decision of the panel’s deliberations,
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This was a painting I almost completed whilst I did my stint at an exhibition of works by a small group of painters I recently joined. So far I’ve done ok selling four, five if you include the one I donated for the hospice that they are collecting for.
This was from an amalgam of an advert I saw and some of my own photos. I did like the light on the glasses and subjects, but I am not too excited by the end result.
Other figurative paintings are available on my ẃebsite: grahammcquadefineart.com
