James Flynn

Hello all, good to be here again, I have managed to make it through another christmas amazingly enough, the usual turnout.....drink far too much alcohol on christmas eve, then spend the whole of christmas day feeling like death warmed up. I did enjoy myself though, and all went well.

This will probably turn out to be a slightly more light hearted post in comparison to the last...... which doesn't really say that much come to think of it, considering I wrote a blog entry about kepler 22b, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life, but hey, just the daily workings of my mind...... Anyway, I like to think that this is a blog with a variety of topics, so just go with it!

It's been a very busy time for me just lately to say the least. In fact I have been fighting for time to get any artwork done at all if you must know, but at last, I have had managed to get myself in the studio and it felt great.

As you may or may not know, I have produced quite a few black and white tonal studies as my most recent works (see previous posts), so I thought I would get out my pastels and get stuck into a nice colour portrait or two.

Prince Philip was in the papers this week, more than just once in fact and although I don't consider myself to be a "royalist", I must say I have been quite inspired by his recent story.

To the best of my knowledge Prince Philip is around ninety years old, and is recovering well from heart surgery, and is showing no sign of slowing down in life, which I personally like to see, and although people will say it is because he has the best treatment available and has been looked after (which may be true), I think it is quite good to see that ninety years old, is not actually that old at all!

You see, over here in the UK we live in what is commonly known as a "nanny state". Meaning everyday we have to put up with health warnings left right and centre, government adverts telling us that this thing is bad for you, and this thing worse for you, food companies making every effort to get the message across that their product is healthy, hideous images on cigarette packets, over the top preaching about alcohol bla bla bla. And to be quite honest, although I think it's a good thing to live healthily, which I do anyway I might add, all these health campaigns have had another effect with me......it has made me a slight hypochondriac. And who can blame me? Or anyone else for that matter, we all suffer because of the intellectually challenged muppets who want to sit on their arse and get fat. The irony is that it has had the opposite effect on me, I am now too concious about health. I think too much about living well, and I did not even need any of this lecturing anyway, I didn't need anyone to tell me about living well.

So it is no surprise that this story caught my eye just recently, and how inspiring to know that the human body is so resilient and strong after all, and good luck to him, I hope he has got plenty more years left in him, no matter what anyone thinks of the royal family.

So, as always, the papers have given me some great reference material, and I have completed two portraits of Prince Philip.

So, two portraits are done and here is the first........

This one come along really nicely, and it is the first colour portrait I have done in a while.

I painted this in pastel, and I am pleased with the result, I painted this one very "loosely" and didn't let myself get caught up in anything too much, and just kind of let myself go.

I really enjoyed this one, and I think I captured the "essence" of the subject rather than fuss too much over detail, and this is how I prefer to work now actually.

Here is the second of the two portraits........

Now this one turned out to be a very different portrait from the first, I ended up spending quite a lot of time getting detail right on this, which is something I did not do with the first.

The first portrait has a more "sketchy" feel to it, whereas I think this one has a slightly more polished look.

I am pleased with both of these paintings, and it has been good to get my pastels out for the first time in a while. Although these paintings are of the same subject, I think I portrayed him in two different ways here, and that is the beauty of art isn't it? Putting some of yourself into the painting aswell!

I hope you enjoyed these, and be sure to come back soon, I am regularly putting my new things here to share with you all.

See you soon,

James