My paintings begin maybe with a doodle from a daydream, a photograph of my children, a local model, or inspired by the last painting i worked on. I usually have a firm idea of the main composition but the rest happens organically as I begin to paint. I use acrylic, metallics and several layers of resin. I start with a primed wooden board cut to the size I require. First, I draw on the main elements and then I paint in some background colour. There is always a plan to this background layer and it is the most critical time of the painting. This is because I need to have a good idea of which colours will be applied upon the next layer. For example, if I want a purple colour, I may put blue on the background layer, add resin and then paint red on the next layer. This creates a purple of more translucent depth than one tube of colour can. The areas that I leave on the background are the most important to me because if these are left untouched throughout all of the resin layers, I can use them as the highlights without the need to paint a flat colour afterwards. This effect cannot be achieved with paint, because it is created by light passing though the resin layers. A shade of black for example would create a deeper black than if it were painted on the top layer. A red could be intensified by painting more reds on the following layers. And so on.
