Oil sketches for a Northern project

Seem to have naturally moved away from the greys. Have been looking at oils, particularly oil sketches. What to say....messy, smelly, get everywhere but luscious, rich and deep ! Ordered lots of mountcard offcuts off ebay and off I went. We have been looking at oils in the Art group and they have been really strong. So, researching urban or Northern artists that I like ...I like David Coulter, David Bez, Nathan Wild, Anna King.

We went round the town and took photos from the car...and my photography skills are pretty grim but it doesn't matter, in fact it helps , if the photograph isn't so good. I find it very restricting to paint from a photo....I think , for me, there is a deep seated sense of trying to accurately portray the photo which , of course, is not my art.

Some of the card I worked straight onto with the oil, some I primed with acrylic so the oils sat on top rather than soaked in.

This was a watercolour on canvas...I had ordered some canvases from Amazon that are specially formulated for watercolours. I quite liked the surface.12 inch sq.

Sketch with a couple of layers.

Again, this one had a couple of layers. Liked it better after the first layer.

Abstraction helped a little with the one.

Photo reference below for this one. The backs.

Over the bypass. ( I had primed the board with white acrylic )

Scraped off the pain and liked it better. Will work back into it.

Wiping the oil paint on ....loved it...and used pencil, that seemed to melt into the oil paint.

Loved using these techniques.

Photo reference of where I used to live.

I ordered mountcard offcuts...there are about 450 pieces of mountcard varying sizes for £8.99. 

The other photos were the Art group from Wednesday.