A New Venture

Speckled Hen. Acrylic 20 x 20cms on stretched canvas
box frame £30

While looking through my photos for some inspiration for a painting recently, I came across a few shots of some bantams that I had taken at Coton Manor in Northamptonshire. Although the speckled hen here took up only a very small part of the photo, I was able to examine the bird in more detail using the computer to zoom in on a potential image.
The result was this acrylic painting of this fine specimen of a Belgium Bantam hen. She was running loose with a few other hens, as well as a cock bird, in lovely long grass filled with bluebells and cowslips - a very English background indeed.

Now the reason for this painting appearing in this post when the title is "A New Venture", is because I have set myself up with an online art shop, and this painting is the first item I added for sale. Although I've only been up and running for a few days, I've managed to list a few of my recent paintings and greetings cards that I have had professionally printed from these, as well as an old chair that I brought back to life. Hopefully the shop will grow,especially as I have more time for painting now, and I will sell lots of paintings and live happily ever after! Hmmmm, maybe that will be wishful thinking, but I did mention on Facebook that my new shop was open for business, and promptly made a sale - the morning sunrise painting I showed you in my last blog! It is now winging its way to the USA

For those interested to see what I am selling, here's the link:
http://folksy.com/shops/franksartshop

The View from my Back Door

Since I've been retired, I am at home and have time to just look out of the kitchen window a lot. For a few mornings now, while gazing up at the sky I have noticed some lovely cloud formations at daybreak. Reaching for my trusty camera and taking a step outside the back door, I take a photograph, then the next day another and so forth. It is a natural progression to translate these photos into paintings, and here is one I did later!

Morning Promise: watercolour on 300gsm 140lb Bokingford paper

Having done quite a few acrylic paintings lately, my wife asked me to do something wet-in-wet, and what better subject for this technique than clouds? A simple subject like this is so easy to do, and took me around 30 minutes - a welcome break from intricate detailed studies that I've been working on of late.