Portrait Shuffle

You may have noticed I'm blogging quite a lot at the moment - that's because I'm in painting mode and painting is so much quicker than quilting. I'd be keeping you waiting for an age if you wanted to see the finished quilting projects from tomorrow's DMTV video - of course they will be finished but not until I've got the painting bug out of my system!

Today I thought I'd have a change from plants and tackle a portrait. This homage to a favourite artist, Vincent Van Gogh, will be another canvas going to The Portrait Shuffle. Everybody knows his sunflower paintings but there's far more to him that that. Just take a look at the Van Gogh Museum in The Netherlands to see the full breadth of his oeuvre. I think his pencil drawings are a revelation.

I've used acrylic paints on one of the Portrait Shuffle's A5 box canvasses for this. Although I've used thickish paint, you can still see the weave of the canvas in this enlarged detail.

The subject matter has encouraged me to paint in a way that's quite unlike my usual style. I needed thick layers of paint to be able to scratch through with the wrong end of a paintbrush to try and get some swirly movement in the background. Normally I work with thin paint diluted with a glaze medium if I'm using acrylics. Quite interesting to try something different!

Bye for now - Linda x