It’s been a really hectic couple of months. We closed the tea lounge to work on insulating the ceiling and I had a lot of homework for my Poultry Science HNC, but the effort has got me seven weeks ahead!

I managed to do just over 2000 words on my pirate book and read eight books on pirates, shipwrecks, a German executioner, and the Portuguese missionaries in Japan.

I continued to sew, paint and print notebooks and begun designing cushions for the new mezzanine for the tea lounge. But I started and am making great progress on this piece.

Acrylics,  50 x 78cm.  I planned another historic thematic painting to go to Chelsea in February.  I always start these with an event, I thus case the French Revolution. The cockerel is the countries symbol and I had an idea of the old regime, the Bourbons fighting the Revolutionists, with the tricolour flag flying.  One of Louis XVI last celebrations was the first hot air balloon flight.  The Montgolfière brothers hot air balloon, globe aérostatique, launched  in 1783, from Versailles.

It therefore seemed a good background to the fight.

I’ve been learning the hardway, that water soluble acrylics actually do not work well with water, a sort of oil and water don’t mix theory. Instead a clear acrylic medium dilutes the paints creating a much smoother consistency, the ability to get finer detail and can be used for glazes.

Now glazes are game changers. The balloon at first looked like a cutout. Trying to darken and loose the edge of the balloon was tricky as I didn’t want to loose its shape. Glazes solved the problem. Mixing a dark glaze and layering over the balloon, it simply layers a wash of colour but allows the underpainted details to still show through.

The cockerels I am using grisaile technique but instead of using grey to map the tones, I have chosen to use a strong turqoise green, given my painting is full of stormy clouds and a green tone. It’s also good to get the main subjects in place and see how much detail, light and shaddow they need. The use of one shade, leaves you to concentrate on the structure of the subject long before adding colour.

So I hope to finish the cockerels base coat tomorrow, then another week to work on their details. The final part will be finishing the basket, ropes, adding more cloud, lightening and details where needed.

Will post a progress report in a couple of weeks. 🙂