Yoka and the Sugarbeats

There’s so much still to do with this canvas but I’ve finally got it moving in a forward direction. The composition has gone through some minor changes here and there before I was happy with the structure of the painting. I want to work into the figures of all five band members, the stage floor, the drum riser, the drum-kit and the back-drop to name but a few! I’ve been waiting for a week for areas of the back-drop to dry but the studio is so cold that it is still wet. I’ve worked alla prima (wet on wet) all over this painting but there are now some things that I want to do which require the paint to be dry….so tomorrow I’ll leave Yoka and the Sugarbeats on another easel and I’ll return to working on the painting of the Kaz Hawkins Band. At the moment I have about five paintings in differing stages of completion or more accurately, incompletion! This allows me to continue working on paintings whilst other paintings are left to dry. I have finished numerous “trace mono-prints” and five paintings from my 2017 Artist-in-Residence at The Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival. I have a further five underway and about another five that I have not yet started…but for which I have ideas! In addition to this bank of work I have another four music inspired paintings that I want to do, an etching from a gig from much earlier in the year and at least two landscape paintings from my summer trip to Ireland….they say “there’s no rest for the wicked”…man, I must be bad!

Yoka and the Sugarbeats at The Great British Rhythm and Blues Festival 2017, oil on canvas, 50.5cm x 50.5cm…UNFINISHED.

30th December 2017: Update! “Yoka And The Sugarbeats @ TGBR&BF ’17” was completed earlier this afternoon. Full details are on the website: https://petemarshart.co.uk/music/