Mulled wine and hot chocolate

Mulled wine - hot chocolate
Christmas market no 2
24 x 30 cms

Continuing on with the Christmas market theme, this one concentrates on the action within the mulled wine stall. I particularly was after the warmth, the bright lights and the distorting effects of the steam. Again I tried very much to stick to big shapes apart from the odd bits of interest. I loved it in it's fairly abstract stages, shown below. I was very tempted to leave it at stage two but I do like people to be able to recognise the figurative subject matter and so I felt it didn't say enough about it yet. I don't know, maybe there's an abstract artist within me trying to burst through!

The mostly warm colour palette offset by those lavender/grey blues, and small touches of hot red, pleased me no end. I think when a painting speaks to you in this way, you just know that something about it will affect something you work on in the future at some point, like having a new arrow in your quiver. You don't need to be conscious about it, or try too hard, it will just infuse and develop within your repertoire. 

Stage 1 - darks

Stage 2 - large shapes - could have stopped here

Lovely blog readers, I need to ask your help with something. I've decided to rename this blog in the new year. At the moment it's called 'ma vie en couleurs' which seemed appropriate when I started as I was living in France at the time. Well I've been back in England three years and I need a new title. Don't worry, everything else about the blog stays the same.

But here's where I need you... can you think of a couple of words or a short phrase that describes me and my work and my usual blog content? Please drop me a line or even better leave a comment on this blog post so that others can see your ideas too. If you are reading this in your email inbox, you can redirect to my blog here. Thanks so much for taking the time :-)

Christmas market

Christmas market no 1 - mulled wine stall
10" x 12"

I loved the lights, colour and busyness of the Lincoln Christmas market that I visited a couple of weeks ago. I did find a place to set up and paint but it was away from where I wanted to be and I got very cold! After a couple of hours of painting followed by a warm up in a cafe I decided to walk around taking photos on my phone if anything caught my eye. It was very busy by then and day was turning into dusk which was the very best time for me.  I find it magical when the artificial lights start to take over from the light from the sky.

Since that day I've been developing the theme in the studio, and trying some new approaches. In many ways this is easier to do in the studio than en plein air, when it's best to get the job done as quickly as you can (especially in this weather!).

With this one I really wanted to keep the drawing quite fluid, so I started with painting large shapes and masses rather than a linear or drawn approach. If you imagine screwing your eyes up so that you can only see a blurred vision of the subject, that's how I began. 

I carried on with large shapes and then assessed which places needed more definition and which didn't.

I wanted to describe a little more the two central figures and the lights and decoration of the stall, but to leave the background group of figures as loose marks and large shapes. I think it's best this way as the figures look as though they are moving and populate the scene without dominating it.

You can probably tell I really enjoyed the whole process, I think it shows in the juicy paintwork!

Detail

Detail showing broad treatment of figures