Fritillaria

As promised here's the new painting for my Tokyo exhibition next year (find out more here). I've been doing lots of botanical paintings on black ground in my sketchbooks and so I really liked developing these ideas into a finished piece. I'm really pleased with the composition, especially the gold leaf and the stems of the plants reaching down to the base of the page.

This picture was a chance to use my new paints, I tend to favour watercolour but on a black ground I use acrylics. I've never really liked the sheen of acrylics, but I've found the water soluble nature of gouache tricky as it's so difficult to apply glazes without affecting the layers below. A few weeks ago I went to a talk by illustrator Christopher Corr and he spoke about his preferred brand of gouache acrylics - Turner paints. I treated myself to a small set and I'm really enjoying them, the colours are great and the matt surface is gorgeous!

This week my head is firmly down as the deadline for the finished artwork for Harvey Nichols is Monday, I'm really proud of how it's looking - it will be installed early September so I look forward to sharing it with you soon.

Have a great week (come on Team GB!)