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Oil Sketches

LIFE BEYOND THE SKETCHBOOK

Creating a final painting is a journey, starting off very simply with an idea or a quick doodle. This leads to a working sketch, which can be pencil, watercolour or oil and finally the full oil painting which takes all the previous elements into account and it's this process that allows us to fine tune all our creations. You can find examples of our sketchbooks in another section on our website but here we thought it would be fun to show you some of the in between processes of a few pieces.
'Only Here For The Beer' Working watercolour and oil sketch, notice the slightly wider field of view to add impact.

COLLECTIONS

When putting together a collection we assemble all the working sketches together as shown above. Favourite images are pulled out to go to the next stage which is creating a full oil, these final oils then form the collections you see as limited editions. The remaining sketches are assigned various duties such as calendar use, social media marketing or future licencing. Nothing is wasted but we do go through ideas and titles at quite a rate.

'Weighs A Tunnock' Occasionally absolute corkers don't make the grade because of release commitments!

Our creations evolve almost on a daily basis; at any given time we are 12-18 months ahead of what you see in the galleries which leads to a double life of moving mentally back and forth when a collection is released that you finished a year and half earlier but it seems to work, even though we may be a little crack'd in the head!

'Smackaroons' Rough pencil idea sketched on a piece of mountboard

Most of these creations are never seen, the limited edition or final oil takes centre stage but the raw brushwork on the inklings of an idea can be just as attractive.

'Smackaroons' shown above is a typical example. From an initial basic idea of two figures throwing macaroons we filled out an entire scene taking inspiration from the film 'Fight Club'. This is usually done quite quickly with large brushes before changing to smaller brushes for details, working at speed allows a little more natural flow to be passed on to the painting. Generally we try to intensify the initial idea, create a colour harmony and tell the story in an attractive manner as possible making sure the humour remains intact.