Since galleries and physical art exhibitions were were closed in March, those of us whose days were organised around producing paintings have had time to think about what we do.

Many of us started as hobby painters, or were inspired to pursue artistic careers by attending art school, evening classes or workshops, and those of us who have been lucky enough to find some level of success, have found ourselves doing a job like any other, with deadlines to meet and commercial challenges to overcome.

We are lucky to have a job we love, but all success brings with it responsibilities, and we will have become known by the subjects we choose and the way we paint them. Many years ago, while I was holding my first one-man shown in a charming little gallery near Tintern Abbey, I met an artist who had just held a sell-out show of distinctive landscapes in a prestigious gallery in Bristol.

Recognising him, I congratulated him warmly on his success, knowing the he had only recently been made redundant as a commercial artist and had taken up free-lance art. Gloomily he said in reply, 'It’s dreadful. They want a follow-up exhibition of eighty paintings by November. The problem is that they want more ****** landscapes, and I want to paint boats now.'

For the first time, I realised that if we succeed it is at least partly due to the business skill of the galleries which show our work.

A colleague and I were reflecting on this when the lockdown hit and both agreed that the best thing we could do was to take a fresh look at our work – our ‘product’ – and explore the possibilities of coming up with something a bit different for our re-launch, whenever that may be.

I have become known for paintings of my favourite subjects – people in places – generally portrayed in bright colours. A typical example is Hippodrome, (see below), which was shown in stages in the November 2018  issue of The Artist.

Hippodrome, oil on canvas panel, (60x60 cm)

But, like my friend in the Wye Valley, I have greatly enjoyed painting boats and the sea, and have had paintings selected several times for display with the Royal Society of Marine Artists in The Mall Galleries, but these have not been my most commercially successful works.

I greatly enjoy, and often demonstrate, painting quick acrylic life-studies and portraits from models, and I have even been known to paint in watercolours – not too badly!

My regular paintings are based on careful designs worked up from photographs which I take and select from, starting with a design drawing and developed layer-by layer in a very traditional style. With no up-coming exhibition in view, lockdown was my chance to try something different.

My experiment (see progress of Harbour Bar, below) is to prepare a fairly loose drawing then build it up during one quick painting session after another – in effect, sketching on an accumulation of sketches. I approach each stage as if looking at the subject anew and trying to bring out a different aspect of the image.

So, I might start with a dark pattern of shapes – rather in the manner of the Notan concept of balancing dark masses against light, a long-established tradition in Japanese art. The natural, contrasting, next stage would be to lay in a light set of shapes, but I can choose if I wish to select a colour to explore as a pattern, or to change from shape-drawing to generalise glazing or scumbling.

The one rule I try to apply is not to be limited by any stage which has gone before, so that I am building up each painting as a succession of ‘snap-shots’, each developing a different aspect of my image, and letting the painting itself, rather than any reference material, suggest what will come next.

By avoiding ‘filling in the lines’ at any stage I am aiming to suggest more directly the experience of being at the chosen scene at a particular time and allowing the viewer to take it in, a blink of the eye at a time.

Harbour Bar, oil on canvas panel, (40x40 cm)

Follow Bob's step-by-step demonstration to paint a Mediterranean cafe scene by clicking here, and see more in the gallery and blogs areas by clicking here.