Cool shades

 Acrylics on Masonite, 15 x 10 cm:

SOLD

Steelworks

 Acrylics on Masonite, 15 x 20 cm:

This work is for sale. Contact me at brianvds@gmail.com.

I found this a rather interesting subject to tackle - trying to get that molten metal glow effect turned out quite a challenge. But I had so much fun, I think I'll return to this sort of thing in future. 

Cigar smoker

 Acrylics on Masonite, 15 x 10 cm:

SOLD

Doll portrait

 Acrylics on Masonite, 20 x 15 cm:

SOLD

I have long thought that dolls, particularly antique-looking ones, are the most wondrously creepy things. And now I finally got around to painting one. 

Blue and green

 Acrylics on Masonite, 20 x 15 cm:

This work is for sale. Contact me at brianvds@gmail.com.

Mugshot #1

 Acrylics on Masonite, 15 x 10 cm:

This work is for sale. Contact me at brianvds@gmail.com.

Painted from a police mugshot. I have no idea who the guy is or what he supposedly did, and I don't really care either. Call me crazy, but I find the faces on mugshots far more interesting to draw or paint than those of most other people. I may well do a whole series of these...

Welder at work

 Acrylics on Masonite, 20 x 15 cm:

This work is for sale. Contact me at brianvds@gmail.com.

Another one of my industrial scenes. Perhaps not entirely conventionally pretty, but a subject I enjoy. I used a limited palette here, of black, white, yellow ocher and burned sienna.

Unlike many modern westerners, I do not suffer from allergy to scenes of industry, and I find people's often extreme aversion to it somewhat strange. It's the very engine of civilization, providing us with all the stuff we like so much  (even when we deny it), including of course the computer on which you are reading this. 

Own a car? Microwave oven? TV? Knives and forks and pots and pans in the kitchen? Paintings on the wall? Clothes made of cotton? In short, just about anything? Thank industries and industrial workers for it. The Tolkienesque rural fantasy world that so many people today seem nostalgic for never even existed in the first place, and even if it did, it too could not exist without industry - even hobbits wear clothes, and use such things as tools, bricks and paint. 

And thus, unlike many (most?) people, I actually rather like scenery with such things as grimy, smoky factories, or train shunting yards, or modern farms with huge harvesters and grain silos. As far as I am concerned, all perfectly worthy subjects for paintings too.

Not that I object to pretty paintings, mind you. I like those too, and indulge in them myself.