Be Excellent To Each Other

Have to scuttle off to E2 in Bethnal Green to get this, my submission to the BP Portrait Awards - wish me luck
Broken Promises
Anybody interested I'll talk more when I get back.
Hope you like it.

That's an excellent self portrait.

Good show DB -- and good luck!

That's awesome work.

Well done

Good luck big man

Mad skills. You are awesome at fingers, sir.

Good luck in the comp!

It looks like a real person. That's not how art's done anymore, is it? I thought you had to have a tent and bed made into the shape of a question mark suspended in sick. Or something.

S'very noice.

Double Plus Good.

Skills man, skills

Great stuff. You didn't sand down the skirting boards before you did the hallway, but I'll let you off.

That woman looks familiar. Is she famous?

Have you stopped doing photographs? The ones of Perry Fenwick and Richard E Grant in particular are superb.

Astounding work DB, thanks for sharing.

Good luck!

she was at my birthday party...

Is it your missus?

Very nice mate. I don't have the patience for realism.

Your neighbor isn't she?

Yes

At first glance, I thought it was a real photo. (jealous)

David Cameron's wife innit.

Fantastic. Love the way you've done the fabric on the dress and how it hangs on her. Top stuff.

Pimping time again. Here's my first commission almost finished - it's a portrait of an old friend's father.
Old Geezer

That's lovely, DB. Really nice.

Wow.. excellent stuff. I could never draw faces or hands so they're the most impressive bits of the painting to me.

That's most triumphant, good sir.

Wow, excellent work DB.

Fuuuuuuuuuck. I thought it was a photo when I first looked at it.

That is really excellent, the detail is quite unbelievable. How long does something like that take you?

That is really good..

Fantastic stuff.

Awesome work sir.

I still find it kind of strange that a photographer likes to paint in a realistic manner, please tell me you do just let go now and then and hurl pigment about from time to time eh?

Thanks everyone.
In answer to Gill it's difficult to say exactly how long as I tend to have several paintings on the go at once, but I would estimate about a month to six weeks in total stretched over several months as I find I need to step away from a painting at regular intervals to make sure I'm not making fundamental errors in perspective and likeness. Basically you can get too close to something from studying it too much and you lose all sense of what's correct.

@Zardoz - only when I'm decorating ;-)

I can only imagine it's massively frustrating. To go from a history of photography to painting, and such a lifelike style of painting too - it must make you really obsess over the details. Still, the results are fantastic.

Not bad stuff at all, DB, but I'll only really be impressed when you can do something *this* good:







Isn't it excellent the way the sneer follows you round the room?

DO NOT mock Rolfy...

No indeed, he's caught the rather feral "urgh, who is this commoner" sneer quite excellently.

It's excellent. Love the hands and the hair. The only thing i don't like so much is the woman's eyes. Or maybe the woman in question has an odd stare anyway

That Woman is our Queen!

How very dare you, Sah! Prepare the fleet!

humm...isn't a neighbor of DBSnappa?

He is bloody posh you know.

Went round his house once. I was surprised that he lived on the Mall.

The Rolf Harris Queen *stands & salutes* portrait including the frame, would make a great commemorative Malted Milk biscuit design when she karks it.

More paintings. This is a portrait of my late Grandfather on my mother's side. I initially thought about doing this last year when I was digging through my archive of old pictures and came across a series of B&W pictures I took of him about 22/23 years ago, when he was in his late 70s. Unfortunately, he was killed, along with my grandmother, in a car crash about five years after these series of pictures. I always liked them so decided I would immortalise him as a gift for my mother. After I'd started the painting I realised that he would have been 100 in March of this year. So there you go - here's a tribute to my late grandfather, James Patrick Cossey, who was a dear dear man to me who I still miss to this day.

Apologies for the artefacting in this image, but I really need to shoot it in natural or softer lighting - if you actually click the image, most of the moire disappears ;-)

Blimey, well done sir! That's really good!

As always, mate, fucking brilliant.

That's incredible.

That's absolutely astonishing!

Top notch. He looks like he was full of character.

Awesome.

Nice, very nice indeed.

That is absolutely brilliant. Very, very good.

Thanks everyone - cheap as it sounds it's nice to get some praise every now and again, even if I do feel slightly craven in the process