paintings

These paintings have so far been tests of taking the work from my sketchbook and translating it into something a little more finalised.

I've been keen on using gouache in a way that is say, a little more involved than solid blocks of colours (almost a paint by numbers approach). The buildup of multicoloured marks seems to be working as something interestin, and the addition of shadow in the image of the bird with the hand is taking it a little further. I've also tried using large sections of black as shadow, but I'm not sure how much I like it yet. It's a little heavy on some images.

I think what needs to be considered next is the portrayal of an environment (around a subject).  That had been the intention in this painting of the horse and rider, but the marks were too absent, or too similarly sized, which lead to a generic background with no signifier of it really being anything at all.