November Update

Bonfire night is a subject I have wanted to cover for a while. Luckily I had the opportunity to go up to Rainworth in Nottinghamshire for their bonfire night. Rainworth has a lovely community atmosphere up there and the warmth of the huge bonfire and superb fireworks display made for a lovely evening with the family! I took several pics on the phone camera to capture the mood of the evening and loved the sparse reflection of the fire on the peoples faces. This was the basis for my painting.

The dilemma I had was the fireworks, because the main aim of the picture was to use the fire as the centre piece. I did paint some fireworks in the top left of the picture but realised straight away it was detracting from the image. Overall I am happy with the end result, I was trying to be careful not to over work the painting. I wanted to keep it as raw as I could, especially with the bonfire.

I have also been having a go at some self portraits for a competition. I am at the point where I am ready to paint the main one but I have been doing other pics in between, I did a couple of paintings of a church in Arnold from my way home from work, the bizarre thing about this time of the year is the light. There is a strange contrast with the sun and the grey looking clouds which I tried to capture.

I will update some more soon when I have progressed on the self portrait, cheers for now, :}>