As part of her prize package for the "Reflections Competition" on our Painting Companions group on Facebook - Joan Wilson from Scotland could pose a query for Paul to answer in a video for uploading onto You Tube.
Joan asked for help in how to paint a misty scene and Paul chose to show this as a simple exercise in acrylics, using a simple mix of yellow-grey.
Watch this three-part video on You Tube and learn not only how to produce a simple misty scene, but how Paul mixes complementary colours to achieve varying yellow-greys - the video Topical Tip on Facebook.

Watch Paul as he explains the background to this painting, how it took four years to get the composition right before proceeding with the grande miniature oil painting.

See a step-by-step reveal of the main seventeen stages from working drawing through to finished painting.

Listen to some wonderful pipe-band music from Dornoch Pipe Band, led by Pipe Major Willie Fraser.

Watch Artist & Author Paul Taggart at his easel, capturing Moishe’s Bagel live over their hour long concert performance at Northern Roots Festival 2010. This start-to-finish reveal of one of his on-the-spot watercolour paintings has been edited down from a total of 25minutes filming time.



Northern Roots Festival brought together by Bruce MacGregor (founder of Blazin’ Fiddles)
Chronicling the varied line-up of musicians and singers, Artist & Author Paul Taggart was to be seen working at his easel throughout the three days of the festival on a series of watercolour montage paintings.

The aim of these paintings being to capture the spirit of the festival, with its policy of open access to all types of music. This is a musical home-from-home for visitors and musicians alike, hosted by someone whose very life is founded on his passion for traditional music and its continuation from one generation to the next.

Held at Bogbain Adventure and Heritage Farm just outside of Inverness, the festival is hosted and directed by Highland fiddler Bruce MacGregor - founder of the multi award winning Blazin’ Fiddles and presenter of BBC Radio Scotland’s flagship music programme “The Music Café” – whose passion in life is traditional music. At the very core of the festival’s being is artistic excellence and an openness to all musical styles, focussing on music, culture, environment, art, and people. The descriptive “roots music” encompasses Scottish traditional, country, bluegrass, Cajun and blues music – music that has heart and soul at its very core. The festival aims to nurture new talent, celebrate old traditions and create a unique atmosphere.

Iain MacGillivray and Ranald Smith very kindly welcomed Paul to record this intimate celebratory concert and asked if a raffle in aid of Highland Hospice was in order - with Paul donating the finished painting as the prize. Amongst those in the generously disposed audience was Shirley Wyness of the Market Bar, holder of the winning ticket.

All proceeds raised from the raffle are being passed over to Linda MacDonald (Fund Raising Manager at Highland Hospice).

35th Birthday!1975 ~ 2010
The 7th Midsummer Gig ( ‘the back catalogue’ )
Ranald Smith and Iain MacGillivray

Sat. 19th June 2010

The Beaufort Hotel, Culduthel Road, Inverness

ANDREW ROSS MACDONALD'S
GIG REVIEW

Paul Taggart and Eileen Tunnell say a big THANKYOU to Andrew Ross MacDonald (a regular singer at the Bogbain Music Open Sessions, to be seen on many of Paul's paintings)for writing up this WONDERFUL GIG REVIEW to share with visitors to our website, FaceBook pages and more.

"So,…………ok,………..…the 35th anniversary concert…More of the same?

Frankly yes, nothing wrong with that.
Actually, in a time when so much is cynically judged and readily dismissed, this concert is, was, and hopefully will be for many years to come a very sizeable montage of quite remarkable change, documentary commentary and shared life experience set to music and song .

Iain and Ranald quip away with each other, and the audience, in friendly riposte, each comfortable with the other’s traits. None can escape the acerbic wit of mgill or Ranald’s ready smile and ability to take a rise out of his own and Iain’s ageing processes and their by products!

Here, in the space of a couple of hours we learn of the heartaches of prospecting for gold in the Shotover River, the commitment of a fan to do homage and pilgrimage, “From Galway to Graceland” to the shrine of Elvis Presley. The demise of a once vibrant Scottish fishing industry at the hands of the bureaucratic EC. Iain’s own composition “The Beacon” reminds us that we are, so often, not masters of our own destiny.

Alan Taylor’s songs have always been high on Ranald’s agenda and “The Morning Lies heavy on Me Father” makes the poignant point of the pointlessness of the Asian conflicts. John Prine’s “Sam Stone” too, on the same subject, features home-coming and the tragedy of drug addiction among the veterans of Vietnam. I have enjoyed Ranald’s cover of this classic for many a year and tear. Even the British Army are not forgotten and “The Blues” are “Routed” once again.

The horrendous events of the killing by the National Guard of student Sandy Scheuer, mark their 40th bloody and shameful anniversary. Appropriately the lads sing Harvey Andrew’s plaintive song “Hey Sandy”.

Marie Saunders, a friend from Ranald’s university days in Aberdeen did a guest spot (as a reprise of her successful spot last year). She “Moved through the Fair” with consummate ease and reminded us that the late Cyril Tawney’s Sally was indeed “Free and Easy”, well relatively inexpensive anyway.

We, of a certain age, like to think we remember where we were when the Kennedy assassinations took place. I do. I also recall the fear and waiting with baited breath whilst the world sat on a knife edge as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded and the two most powerful men in the world played poker with us all. Leon Rosselson’s fine song reminded us of the horrors of nuclear war and its unimagineable consequences. The song reminded Ranald of the Ian Campbell Folk Group although mgill insisted it was principally Lorna that Ranald remembered!

Mr Beaujangles got an airing and a well researched jingle from Ranald on the origins of the man and the song. A suitable tribute is added from Iain to the wonderful and inimitable Sammy Davis jn.r . Soon we are “Rolling Home to Caledonia”, and hoping that we’re all still around and eagerly awaiting Ranald’s promise of “new” material next year. Now there’s a thing…."

copyright Andrew Ross MacDonald

"Over The Sea" commissioned watercolour painting
by Artist, Chronicler and Author
Paul Taggart

"This watercolour painting was commissioned as a significant gift for someone with deep-rooted childhood memories of this expansive view in the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland.

To evoke such memories many years later is quite a responsibility and I was determined not to disappoint.

As I stood side-by-side with the client surveying this breathtaking scene, he recounted his childhood days spent on the family croft. Of walking down by the water's edge, the sunlit days, the vivid colours in his mind's eye. The blue reflected sea, the rays of light in the sky, the glow of bright green grass against the dark waters of the sea and the bright pinpoints of distant sheep dotting the landscape.

I made some notes of all these elements with the intention of incorporating them into the painting and produced some preliminary jottings in my sketchbook.

Back in the studio I subsequently produced a full scale cartoon - a drawing in graphite of the proposed compositition.

This video takes viewers from start-to-finish through the principle stages of the painting, showing its development from initial sketches through to the finished painting and subsequent;ly published Limited Edition Print, available exclusively to Paul Taggart's Private and Print Collectors.



Underlying music track reproduced by very kind permission of Bruce MacGregor, Highland Fiddler, founder of Blazin' Fiddles and BBC Radio Presenter.

Featuring Track 2 from Bruce MacGregor's CD 'Loch Ness' - entitled "The Road to Skye".....

available from
http://www.blazinfiddles.com

This four-part, free-to-view Paul Taggart Painting Snippet was inspired by several queries posted in the Art Clinic section of Paul Taggart's website

http://www.artworkshopwithpaul.com

Raihanath Muhammad of Oman wrote
Respected sir,
Greetings to you. I am working out on ruins of old houses with reference from a photo in oils. I have been struggling for the past five days to get the broken effect of the old houses unfortunately I’m unable to get the correct broken effect texture. I should be most grateful to you if you could kindly provide me more detailed step by step instruction as to how to work on it. I wish you good luck and all the success for your future. Thanking you
Yours sincerely
Raihanath

Maggie Loiseau of the USA wrote:
Dear Paul, I am trying to create the illusion of stone, and my colors looked dull. Do you have a suggestion. Thanks.
Terry Eaglefeather from the USA wrote:
How do I paint rocks into a scenery with acrylics ?
Thank you ^_^
In this Paul Taggart Painting Snippet, Paul takes you step-by-step through the stages of producing a stone wall using texture, glazing and tinting. He shows how it is not necessary to carry out detailed pencil drawing work to achieve the required finish.

Follow this Four-Part video on You Tube and watch it in conjunction with the Paul Taggart Painting Snippet of Glazing in Acrylics. Also check out Paul’s Art Clinic on his main website for more on glazing in acrylics, as well as the other Occasional Tutorials on his FaceBook group page Art Workshop With Paul Taggart Painting Companion.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=277237235133&ref=mf

See more tutorials on Paul Taggart's main website

http://www.artworkshopwithpaul.com

To post a query from which Paul will select the subject for future Painting Snippets please leave this on his Art Clinic at Paul’s main website

http://www.artworkshopwithpaul.com (secure log-in required)

Inspired by Painting Companion Terry Eaglefeather's photograph and Paul's Painting Snippet on Reflections (showing on Paul's You Tube channel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxZAM1q0enE) this was a chance to get some Cryla acrylic paints from Daler-Rowney along with a brush, plus a copy of Paul's book 'Acrylics from Scratch'.

And some Paul Taggart Painting Snippets to be filmed especially for the winner and for everyone who entered.

This was not a competition to show who is best at painting, it was about trying something out for the first time, whether it was…………….

> painting reflections for the first time
> trying out a new medium for the first time
> taking photographs to inspire a painting for the first time
> entering a competition for the first time
> sharing work with others for the first time
> just doing something for the fun of it ………………………………………..

Painting Companions were invited to produce a painting in whatever medium they liked, which took reflections as its main theme!

All of this was done on-line through Paul's FaceBook group Art Workshop With Paul Taggart Painting Companions.

Most importantly - the winner was not picked out by Paul.

The winner was voted for by visitors to the Art Workshop With Paul Taggart Painting Companions group on FaceBook.

Which gave participants the chance to tell all their friends on FaceBook about this competition so that they could participate and/or vote.