Bateaux Mouches, Paris

Bateaux mouches, Paris  © Peter Gander

Mosaic again. Paris by night. Painting of the famous Parisienne boats company sign with the Eiffel tower in the background. Dip pen and watercolour on rough paper.

Ruby port bottle & glasses

Port bottle & glasses  © Peter Gander

Mosaic painting. A particularly nice chance effect of transparent blends on the bottle. A wax candle was used to provide glasses highlights.

Mosaic painting: Ballantine’s whisky

Ballantine’s Whisky  © Peter Gander

Another mosaic piece, this time it’s for a client with a penchant for whisky. Dip pen and ink with watercolour on rough 300gsm paper.

Fish & chips

Fish 'n' Chips  © Peter Gander

Another ‘Mosaic square’ painting. I used Winsor & Newton ink for this one, which gives a rich finish on this 300gsm rough paper. Salt & vinegar anyone?

Café

Café  © Peter Gander

Using Indian ink and white gouache on Indian Khadi paper, a loose, gestural painted sketch of a waiter through the window of a London café. The heavyweight, cotton rag paper is perfect for those unexpected blooms, spreads and grainy effects that give richness to the piece. Indian ink, gouache on Khadi 310gsm paper.

New Year, New Yew Tree Sign

At last, The Old Yew Tree, Westbere, Kent, has my new sign up. Here I proudly stand below it, with a real yew tree visible right behind it.

President Emmental pack

‘President’ Emmental  © Peter Gander

Another small square painting for one of Fiona’s Family Mosaics. Each small square of the print reflects a particular interest of the person or family involved and a small painting like this looks far better than a ‘pack shot’. Drawn with a dip or ‘scratch’ pen, I allowed the (Rotring) ink to dry before adding watercolour, as it’s resistant to water only when dry. The dip pen gives a lovely, variable line like no other. The coloured shadow was painted wet-into-wet. Ink and Winsor & Newton watercolour on Daler-Rowney 300gsm rough paper.

‘Seven Peas’ Gravy Boat

The ‘Seven Peas’ Gravy Boat  © Peter Gander

Following on from my recent post & visit to Chessell Pottery in the Isle of Wight, I recently painted this gravy boat (well, it’s a half-litre jug really) as my keen cook wife wanted something handmade for Christmas. I found the excellent Espressions pottery painting & ceramics café in The King’s Mile in nearby Canterbury, Kent. The spelling is intentional and reflects their excellent coffee offering. The place is run by a really friendly couple and they bent over backwards to see that they had the right kind of pot in for me too. Design-wise, I took a leaf out of Edward Lear’s Owl & Pussycat verse and painted a scene to match my theme of ‘sailing the seven peas’. Again, using the sgraffito method, I was advised to paint several layers of white onto the entire raw jug, allowing this to dry and then add a few layers of dense black. Scraping back the black to reveal the white layer underneath proved much easier this time as the softer white layer was more yielding than the white ceramic substrate of my Chessell fishy plate, so thanks for the tip, Espressions!

The Beetle

The Beetle  © Peter Gander

Back to acrylics for this new painting, a Christmas present for my eleven year-old son Jack. It’s our bottle-green Mexican import Volkswagen Beetle, in the (much lovelier) old style of body design, though only a decade old as it was one of the last run of Mexican imports made in the retro style in 2003. Jack loves classic cars and is very fond of this motor (as I am) and asked that I paint if for him months ago, so he should be chuffed with this. I had got to the stage where the car was finished on a plain white canvas and something was lacking, so I gave it a bit more of a cooler, urban feel, with spattered and running paint. (Hope he’s too busy to be looking at my website before Christmas Day ;)

Flame koi (digital)

Flame koi  © Peter Gander

From water(colour) to fire today, experimenting with Flame Painter, designed by Peter Blaskovik over at EscapeMotions. If you’ve ever fancied playing with fire without getting burnt, this is the drawing package for you. I bought it thinking it would be a good tool to sketch out (real-life) fire sculpture pieces, another creative pursuit I am keen to look into. If there are any artists out there that know anything about fire sculpture by the way, do let me know. Flame Painter/Wacom Bamboo/Adobe Photoshop

Misty morning, Swalecliffe

Misty morning, Swalecliffe  © Peter Gander

A recent cool, early morning November cycle ride took me through the coastal area of Swalecliffe, in between Herne Bay and Tankerton, Whitstable. Visibility was poor, but atmosphere rich - dog walkers on the dirt track in this marshy area the loomed out of the fog which unfurled from the sea, merging into the grey sky in a horizonless vista. Despite the fog, I managed to spot my first white egret here in Swalecliffe Brook (on the left of the painting). Like a small albino heron, it stood ghostly and motionless in the water, probably on the lookout for eels. The absorbent paper is a weighty mould-made 560lb and made the merging of colours in the fog a dream, as the paper retains the water for ausefully long period. Winsor and Newton watercolour on Jackson’s 560lb Extra Rough Eco Handmade paper.