More oil painting practice

This time I'm trying to paint a portrait of my lovely old dog Darwin (who sadly died in January 2009). No real clue if how I'm painting it is how you're supposed to paint in oils, but so far so good I think and we'll see what happens! Might have to get some fast-dry medium though as I'd like to paint on this as a base but not mix into it too much. Kind of like saving a digital painting at a certain point and going back to it? No? No, maybe not.. :P

Anyway this is fun and I've made myself a handy glass palette on a little side unit I use for storage and that feels really comfortable to use. Hopefully I'm creeping towards a solid set up that I can work from and start trying different things with oils.



EDIT: And a bit more:

Wedding caricature

This customer used their caricature as a wedding display, and framed it so that guests could sign it! What a great idea :)
Here's the original:

Richard Dawkins "Dawkins Says" t-shirt designs

I've added a couple of "Dawkins Says" t-shirt designs to my RedBubble shop to go with the "Hitch Says" ones - having fun with these designs! Here's the design and links to the shop:




Quote t-shirt 1: “I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.”

Quote t-shirt 2: “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

A happy customer!

I received a lovely thank you e-mail at the weekend from a customer, and a great photo of the caricture subject with their caricature!

Dear Neil,

I just wanted to say thank you for the fantastic job you did with Xxxx’s caricature. We presented it to her today and she was delighted. Everyone was marvelling at how good the caricature is. I’ve attached a picture (sorry about the flash!).

All the best!

Kat Von D... cont...

Still not happy with this, I really want to keep pushing the exaggerations as much as possible so I keep chopping and moving bits about and then re-sketching from scratch to get something I really think works. So far, I think the second one here is as far as I'd want to go, but who knows? :) It's much better than what I started with anyway.

EDIT: That's it, I'm stopping with this one! Probably.

Kat Von D 2

Better. That's much more like what I had in my head. Could be a fun painting! Time to see if oils are as fun painting on a bigger scale ;)

Or I might have another go and try and distort even more, it's still a bit tame...

Some recent gift commissons

Here are a few more of my recent gift caricature commissions - some really fun jobs here! A vintage motorcyclist, an award winner, a Glastonbury couple and a rail employee! If you would like to commission a gift caricature for an event, celebration or just for yourself, e-mail me for a quote and check out my website. Also there is a bigger gallery of gift work on my Facebook page.

Kat Von D

Just a quick sketch of the amazing tattoo artist Kat Von D - I'd like to do a painting of her soon based on this once I've worked out it a bit. I'm a bit addicted to the current crop of tattoo TV shows, Miami Ink, London Ink and of course L.A.Ink. The talent that Kat and the rest have is very inspiring.

Katy Perry oil painting

Not a caricature, just something I wanted to try to practice with oils. I'm a big fan of pin-up art, Gil Elvgren in particular and I'd love to be able to paint something like his work. This is Katy Perry's new album cover (slightly adjusted to fit a landscape canvas) and it took me something like four or five hours on and off today. Really pleased with it for a first crack at this sort of thing. It's 14" x 10". The first photo is the block in which took about an hour or so, and the second is the finished painting. Let me know what you think!

Finished Dr.Who!

Well, ok - not finished actually, as I don't have a brush small enough to do the text on the door sign! Drat it. Still, other than that it's finished! Need to think of someone else to do next...

Once I've finalised this I expect to have prints available for sale on my website - perhaps as a pair with Sherlock?

Still working on Dr.Who:

Getting there slowly with this one, although there will be more detail in it than the Sherlock painting. This is a close up of the face detail which still isn't really finished yet. Back to it!

Second oil painting - Matt Smith

Off we go with another A4 oil painting - this time it's Matt Smith, the new Doctor Who. It'll be a mirror of the Sherlock one. Spent a few hours on the stages pictured above, so far this one isn't going as well as the first, I'm finding it harder and I think it might be because I'm using a different board - this one is a Winsor & Newton canvas board whereas the first was on Daler board which has a much rougher texture. I think I prefer that, as it grabs the paint better. We'll see how it goes :)

Gwen Stefani prints now available

Check out the Traditional Paintings section of my website now, as I have a limited edition of 100 A3 prints of this Gwen Stefani painting for sale to go with the Billie Joe Armstrong one ;)

Or you can order a print directly from this blog by clicking the 'Buy Now' button below - the A3 signed and numbered print is £25:

6 Of The Best - Edinburgh gallery show

Starting today is the gallery exhibition "6 Of The Best" at Digital Design Services in Edinburgh - it's on until 27th August so if you're in Edinburgh for the Fringe, pop in and check it out! Here's my work in the gallery:


Also showing work are these incredible artists:

MIKE GIBLIN – Character Design
MARYNA HALTON – Photographic Fine Art
NICK HARRIS – Fantasy Art
OLLY HOWE – Illustration
KATE KNIGHT – Contemporary Florals

I'm really honoured to have my work displayed alongside those guys. Thanks again to Colin Knight of Digital Design Services for setting it up!

Sherlock finished (ish)

Done, although I might add the door-knocker that's in the reference photo yet (and sign it!). Really pleased with how this turned out considering it's a first effort in oils. Very exciting, now I need to think of some more people to paint!

Oh and this painting is A4 size roughly.

Sherlock continued...

D'you know what? I think I get oils. A little light bulb went off in my head as I was painting more detail into the face today. I really like oils! Now I'm excited to finish this painting and see how it'll look. This is a close up of the face, sorry for the dodgy flash photo.

Still trying to improve the likeness - the left cheek (his right) is too high so I need to see if I can bring that down somehow. But this is fun. I think I'll be doing more of these smaller oil paintings :)

Oils! WOOOO :P

Here's my first attempt at an oil painting (well the first hour or so of it anyway). I don't have any idea if what I'm doing is right or not, but it's looking ok so far... takes a bit of getting used to after using acrylics for so long, but I like aspects of oil compared to acrylic. I'll be very happy if I can crack this and do something decent. This is Benedict Cumberbatch again, the BBC's Sherlock Holmes. Will do more and update soon ;)

Pencil sketches

One thing I have never done enough of - ever, not just now - is regular pencil sketching. So I'm trying to get back in the habit by doodling some things in a sketchbook. These are a few quick photos of a few pages - all BAD - although I quite like my sketch of Benedict Cumberbatch (what an awesome name!) as Sherlock Holmes (a new modernised Holmes made by the BBC, for you Johnny Foreigners who haven't heard of it) on the far right. Might do a Watson and make a painting of that soon.

So anyway, I'll keep doing these and maybe post more soon if any more of them aren't utterly dreadful...

Gwen Stefani / No Doubt painting finished

All done. Could probably do more on the detail front but I don't want to overdo it and get it all muddy. It's acrylic on canvas, 1m wide x 1.2m high. I'll varnish it tomorrow and the colours will pop a bit more I think.

Glad it's out of the way, now I want to find someone new to paint on a smaller scale in oils to see how that works...:)

New t-shirts available

I've put three more caricature paintings onto t-shirts at RedBubble, pop over to my store there to buy and to check out the range that I have there now. Will be adding more soon I expect! Here are the new ones:

Pope on tour 2010!


Joker "I believe..."


Angelina Jolie in 'Wanted'


All sort of colours of t-shirt available of course!

Caricature Club t-shirt store at RedBubble