This week I have been finishing up a couple of tiny paintings I started before Christmas last year. But in actual fact the original sketches for these have been sitting on my desk for much longer. I keep a pile of thumbnails that sometimes make it to paint and other times just get buried under new ideas. When I am looking for new things to paint, I often sift through my old ideas and these two little drawings kept asking me to paint them. The problem is that if I plan to paint them on a large scale, then I have to have a large block of time and time is the one thing we never seem to have enough of. So sometimes I just have to scale down to make things happen and even then the tiny ones take time.

I started these two in December last year working on them side by side. As it became apparent that they would take longer than expected (they always do) I decided to focus on the one with the pale purple/greyish background.

Sometimes when I post these thumbnail sketches on Instagram, people ask me what the grid is for and if I draw to a grid. Essentially I just use the grid to scale up the sketch to a larger size - I somehow work better on a smaller scale and once I have a larger canvas I get a bit lost without some reference to the proportions of the original sketch.

I often take photos while waiting for the paint to dry so I don’t drag my hand through it.

I often get asked how I get the paint so smooth and opaque. Firstly I always say don’t look too close! Gouache by its nature is an opaque medium but it really depends on what colour you are using as some are translucent and you need to add water to get it to the right consistency. A tip for the translucent colours is that I often add permanent white to these - yes it will make the colour lighter but then you can add some darkness back by adding another colour. I do spend a lot of time mixing colours and I would rarely use any colour straight out of the tube except maybe black and white.

The last couple of weeks I have finally found some time to finish off the second small painting. I usually work closely to my colour rough but this one I changed a fair bit as I went along. It’s a happy little illustration which I have titled ‘Full of Hope’ Next week I will be working on a challenging piece for a client. I am always more nervous when I am painting for someone but it also makes me find my best work I think. It is drawn up and ready to go and I can’t wait to be able to show you the finished piece!

On the Desk