What is... August

August's calendar image is this...

...Watercolour painting of a church in Majorca, painted after I visited the island in 2009. If I could remember the exact location, I would reveal that too, but I can't.

Not much else to say really, apart from - hopefully the weather stays as sunny as in the picture, haha!

What is... July

Far later than planned (let's just say that Wimbledon was a huge distraction), here's the calendar image for July...

This calendar image was created eight months ago, yet features Novak Djokovic & Andy Murray, who contested the 2013 Wimbledon men's singles final just three days ago... So if you want some tips for who to put your money on next year, you know who to ask, haha.

I first created a series of tennis caricatures in June 2011, and of those, Novak's (above, left) was my favourite. Andy Murray's (above, right) was created in July 2012 after he lost last year's Wimbledon final to Roger Federer.
And no, it's not a complete coincidence that this calendar image was a reflection of the recent Wimbledon final: All my calendar images were planned to somewhat reflect their particular month (some a lot more so than others), and what better time of the year for tennis than July?

While I'm here [spoiler alert, haha], congratulations to Andy Murray for his latest triumph!

What is... June

June's calendar image is this old painting from my 12fp(s) Film-inspired Painting Series.

It depicts a scene from Jean-Luc Godard's 1963 film, Le Mepris, starring Brigitte Bardot.

I included it here because the Mediterranean setting portrays the kind of warm, sunny weather that I was hoping to see in Scotland at this time of year... I don't mean to speak to soon, but after 2 days, it's so far so good! And even if the weather turned out to be rubbish, at least this would [hopefully] brighten your day!

Three Colours: Bleurgh (new acrylic paintings)

Earlier this week I dusted-off my old acrylic paints and had a play around. First up was the following Impressionist-inspired landscape of the local countryside:

I'd estimate it to have been an hour or two, of vibrantly splashing paint around until some kind of form began to appear through the mess... Yes it was based upon a photo, but I wasn't trying to be too precise about the representation - I was just trying to get a feel for the acrylic paints again.
I used a palette of three colours (red, yellow, blue, plus white) in a desperate bid to avoid greens straight from the tube.
It's created an interesting result: Yet 3 days later, I still have no idea whether I completely love or hate it!

Following that, I found myself to have a bit too much leftover paint on my palette, so rather than completely waste it, I decided to paint this very random self-portrait:

This was 10 minutes of throwing the colours anywhere they fitted, and again, a case of just waiting for the final image to make some kind of appearance...
...And here was you thinking that there's some kind of logic to painting!? Haha, sorry, not in this case!