Henny Beaumont

Bethy's portrtait, finished.

Bethy's drawing on the floor ( work in progress)

I'm working on this at the moment. This is from a photo of my daughter Beth, who came down on her own, very early  one morning and drew all over the kitchen floor. I haven't really started to work on her drawing yet, which was so beautiful, an endless blue line. I'm saving it, till I'm completely happy with her face. It is almost there.

New Work

New Work

I felt like painting something on a different scale to the work I have been doing recently. I needed to paint without the weight and responsibility of trying to capture a likeness, and trying to do justice to my Mum and Amanda. I'm hoping to finish Amanda in the next sitting. I can't face posting it at this stage because I am so disappointed in my ability to paint her. Fingers crossed, it may improve next week.

My Mum 5th sitting.

Amanda work in progress

This is the third sitting of my friend Amanda. I hope she'll sit some more, but she is very busy. 

Painting my Mum (Work in progress six more sittings to go)

 

I have been wanting to paint my mum for a while. She has been sitting for me once a week for the last four weeks. I didn't realize quite how gloomy I had made her look. What I have failed to capture, is a particularly quizzical expression in her left eye. I've just succeeded in making her  making her look  miserable, which she isn't.

 I keep getting tempted to fiddle around with her features, before I have properly resolved the structure of her head. I find that once I have sorted out the structure, the features almost paint themselves. But she has such interesting eyes, it is almost irresistible not to paint them first. I love painting a face that I am so familiar with. Although in some ways it is more difficult, as  I  have to force myself to be objective, to understand and interpret what I am seeing and not just paint what I know. I am reckoning on ten sittings so I'll see how it goes.

Painting at the Princes Trust

 

Each week, I spend a day working from the life model, at the Princes Trust drawing School in Shoreditch. It's a very useful way of keeping "my eye in" . At the moment, I am using the model as a starting place to explore colour and tone in a more abstract way.

Toys

This week I have been painting from objects in my house. This is a detail from a quick study of toys on my kitchen shelf using acrylic gouache, inspired by Morandi.

To see more of my still life paintings look in the Work for sale Album. 

Convalescing

Pastel portrait 45x 87cm by henny beaumont

This week my daughter was off school sick. I took the opportunity to do some studies in pastel. She would only sit still for about 10 minutes at a time so I had to work quickly. 

 

Here she is with her sister. All better!