by Chris | Jan 5, 2010 | Testimonials
We’ve just got back from our niece’s Graduation party in Bristol and she loved the portrait! As we were walking up the path to her house, I noticed the heart in her window which you feature in the portrait. She spotted it immediately when she opened the...
by Chris | Apr 5, 2007 | Paintings of Italy
I finished this little painting on my 50th birthday, last week; appropriately enough as it is very much to do with the passage of time. The clock is reputedly one of the oldest in Venice, on the church of San Giacomo de Rialto, which is just behind the Rialto market....
by Chris | Mar 10, 2007 | Paintings of Spain
As soon I walked through the 14th century Moorish arch into the Patio de los Naranjos (Court of Orange Trees), a feeling of peace descended upon me. I’m not prone to these things, but water from a sculptural stone fountain played in the middle of a walled garden, set...
by Chris | Mar 9, 2007 | Paintings of Italy
I finished painting this watercolour today; there’s a bit more fiddling about with the gondolas in the foreground, but it’s finished in the sense that it’s now best left alone! Am I pleased with it? As much as I ever am with a painting. It’s...
by Chris | Mar 7, 2007 | Creative Projects
I’ve started a painting this week in my ‘classic’ watercolour style! By that I suppose I mean that the painting is carefully composed, with a preliminary pencil sketch (not shown here) to work out tonal values, composition and atmosphere. I love this...
by Chris | Mar 6, 2007 | Paintings of Spain
Showered and refreshed, I emerged back on to the street, bordering on to the railway sidings that my modest hotel overlooked, in what was clearly an unfashionable quarter of the city. Just as when you bang your head for long enough against a wall, it’s lovely when you...
by Chris | Mar 6, 2007 | Paintings of Spain
From an early age, the sound of the Classical or Spanish guitar has had a profound effect upon me, evoking moods or even memories, of places to which I have never been. I am not talking of the rhythms of Flamenco, but rather the more restrained music of the classical...
by Chris | Mar 6, 2007 | Paintings of Spain
The first day had been a great success by my standards. My first painting was not a disaster, and I had two other drawings under my belt, which I liked, and could later paint from, in the studio. Giddy with my success I hopped out of bed the following morning, and...
by Chris | Feb 26, 2007 | Paintings of Spain
Endless souvenir shops, outdoor cafes and warmly inviting streets provided displacement activities that carried me to that time of day when its too early to go home, but its too late to start much new. My ramblings had taken me to the banks of the Guadalquivir river,...
by Chris | Feb 26, 2007 | Paintings of Spain
Seville Cathedral is big. Reputedly the third biggest in the world, topped only by St. Pauls in London, and that other big one in Rome. Visiting any such tourist hot-spot one has to fight off the sense of being a processed pea, amongst throngs of other visitors,...
