I have just discovered how to do these mini animations. I am fascinated with the process of painting and the plasticity of the paint, I love to flick back and forth from my progress photos watching the figure approach and melt away.
This is a self portrait that I left unfinished, you can see I wiped the eyes away in the morning. They didn’t feel right. But I became quite fond of the unfinished piece. If I leave a piece for too long it grows on me like a person and I find it hard to touch them as they have their own presence. People, I never meant to create, sit in my room and I don’t quite feel I have the right to change them anymore.
I’m only half way through this sketchbook but i’ve got lots of images to share from it already. A lot of them are portraits, including those done on the London Underground/Overground – so if you’re a Londoner there’s a tiny chance you’ll find your own picture. If you’re part of my friends and family there’s a much greater chance. I’ve decided to make a portraits page on this site as I do so many.
I’d also like to make a small note about the lovely sketchbooks which I have been working in lately. They’re from a little french company called Alibabette, personal and friendly with charming designs (i’m quite fussy with designs on my sketchbooks – I generally prefer them plain) and I really recommend them. The covers are paper, so they do get grubby but I don’t mind that in the least as beat-up old looking things only increase in beauty to me. The paper is creamy and thick enough to take watercolour, though the colour of the pages dulls the paints a little. They have lots of sketchbooks but ‘Artbooks’ are 200 pages and, in my opinion, make a great journal.
Ellis 