Mirror, mirror...

I got a new toy! Isn't it fantastic!?!? Unfortunately a convex mirror I bought on eBay was complete rubbish and really didn't work at all, the mirror was such poor quality that you had to look through one eye to even be able to focus on the reflected distant image. This mirror was found by a friend at a boot fair and he snatched it up for me. It's a proper shop security mirror, though larger than the one I had in my previous studio, and one this size would be no less than £100 new. It was £8.

Not sure if it translates well in a photo but for example the lightbulb is actually about 3.5 feet away from the mirror. A convex mirror is really the only way I can work on a 150cm wide painting in a room that's only 260cm deep! And I can't even get that far away from the canvas since my easel is behind me on the other wall (which you can see in the photo). Though I'll be moving that now that paintings have been shipped to the Masham Gallery for the Coastlines exhibition.

So you can see the beginnings of the large Isle of Wight paintings. The 'gormleys' painting is the one sitting on the easel. All 3 of the 120x150cm canvases have underpaintings on them now but on the weekend I ran out of some vital colours (Golden's sap green and transparent yellow iron oxide in particular) so am now waiting for some more paint to arrive in the post.

So I have to play the waiting game for a few days. Until the doorbell rings I've been working on ACEOs, getting the new Etsy shop up and running, updating my website (please ignore the odd look, it's in the midst of a redesign to match the blog, podcast and Etsy pages), and doing more studies on paper and small canvases.