250 Lolly - lino print

More hot holiday style printing today.

249 Ice Cream - lino print

I am on a lovely long lazy holiday at the moment so all I could think to do today was make an ice cream print, expect a few coloured ones tomorrow.

248 Selfie - pastel and Linoprint

If you can remember back to my self portrait from day 240, I have worked into one of the, ahem, lesser quality prints with pastel. A technique I have only just started using during this years daily pictures. I ripped the paper so I had to stick another print behind the original piece.

247 Electricity Pylon - electric paint, charcoal

Yes electric paint! As you can see this drawing lights up nothing that crazy about that but it is happening because of electric paint. Yes electric paint! 

245 Tour de France - stage 21 - oil on dibond

Le tour est finis. Today's sprint to the champs élysées was a very exciting end to a great tour both for Vincenzo Nibali and for me!

Here is one of my favourite bits of today, as they all race around the Arc de Triomphe.

I have only just realised my nod to the painter Leon Kossoff in this painting. I do love thick paint!

245 Tour de France - stage 20 - oil on dibond

Time trial day today. I knew I wanted to paint just the road and the cyclist and I was pretty sure I wanted to paint the time trial world champion, Tony Martin. So here he is in his world champion onesie! The race of truth the painting of truth! Chapeau Tony!

 

244 Tour de France - stage 19 - oil on dibond

I have thoroughly enjoyed painting these juicy, painty Tour de France stage paintings along with the cyclists and have even had them featured in Bicycling Magazine in thier piece about Le Tour art, have a look : http://www.bicycling.com/tour-de-france/tour-features/dan-young-daily#.U9AMRuPSF9K.twitter after today there are only two more stages then the bike riders have a rest, I will continue painting so don't worry.

Here you can some of the Astana team in amongst some maize fields with a bit of weather perhaps!

243 Tour de France - stage 18 - oil on dibond

An important stage today, won by Vincenzo Nibali, the hot favourite for the yellow jersey with only three stages to go. Here he is flying down one of today's mountains.

242 Tour de France - stage 17 - oil on dibond

I love these sinewy mountain roads, going down not up! This was a particularly windy road as the tour dipped into Spain.

241 Tour de France - stage 16 - oil on dibond

The race begins again and today they touch the Pyrenees, can you see them? I don't think I could make some of those climbs I my car!

240 Self portrait (selfie) aged 40 - lino print -

It is a rest day on he Tour de France but not on Dan Young, Daily. So I have revisited my self portrait from the previous rest day and added another plate which has the coloured areas on. I think I want to add another layer of colour on my face and the back ground but my finger has got pins and needles so I thought I would stop for today. But keep an eye out for a limited edition run of 40 prints, to celebrate my forty years on this planet.

 

239 Tour de France - stage 15 - oil on dibond

A day in Provence, complete with a lavender field.

238 Tour de France - stage 14 - oil on dibond

Here comes les Alpes!

237 Tour de France - stage13 - oil on dibond

An up hill painting today, too hot for it really but these cyclist chaps seem to lap it up!

236 Tour de France - stage 12 - oil on Dibond

Here is a quick little descent, which incidentally is my cycling specialty, but I expect the professional cyclists don't scream weeeeeeeeeeeeee! as they descend. It was also very hot today, here as well as on the road in France, I hope that the heat is conveyed through this painting.

235 Tour de France - stage 11 - oil on dibond

Stage 11 today, I didn't see very much of the race as I am back at work I caught up with the end this evening and was quite taken with this rocky outcrop which reminded me of some of the lime scale outcrops you get in he Cotswolds where I live.

234 Self Portrait - aged 40 - Linotype print

It is a 'rest day' on the tour de fence so my unofficial artist in residence series is also having a rest day. I have been meaning to make a self portrait for a while and my recent birthday seemed like a good time to take stock of my visage. Here I am in sketch form and the lino plate ready for printing watch out for the next 'jour de repos' for a series of prints, coloured and otherwise. 

Why the fez? Long story, but it is one of my birthday presents and they are red.

233 Tour de France - stage 10 - oil on dibond

This little painting, all of these tour paintings are 16 cm x 10cm, depicts a dark and stormy skyline reflecting the dark and stormy nature of the tour as it takes another of the favourites from the race. Sorry to see Contador pull out today but it all bodes for an exciting race. Also, happy Bastille day.

232 Tour de France - stage 9 - oil on dibond

 I have been recovering from my birthday yesterday by falling asleep through today's stage in the TDF. I did wake up in time to see Tony Martin win by a huge margin in spectacular fashion. I am thouroughly enjoying my own personal painting tour as a self appointed artist in residence at the Tour de France! Can you see tony on the road, he is the little black and white dot climbing the Grande Pierre.

231 Tour de France -stage8 - oil on dibond

Happy birthday to me! So I haven't seen today's stage apart from this very brief glimpse earlier on.... Looks quick eh! 

230 tdf

Whoops... Late

229 Tour de France - stage 6 - oil on dibond

What should have been a quiet stage turned out to claim a few more riders as they fell on the wet roads, here is one such wet road. The blue you can see, top right, is a strip of cornflower that the farmers of today's part of France have planted to commemorate the young soldiers who lost their lives in the war.

228 Tour de France - stage 5 - oil on dibond

Oh dear what a lot of crashes in the tour today, also a very grey day as favourite Chris Froome had to leave the race. Here is a a treacherous corner on the cobbles.

227 Tour de France - oil on dibond

The Tour de France is now in France... One of the inks I like about watching the tour is the way the landscape changes, or not. This view of the north of France is not that dissimilar to a view of England.

226 Tour de France - stage three - oil on dibond

A surprise today in the stage from Cambridge to London, linseed oil plants have purple flowers! Lovely, and here is a field of it next to a very yellow crop, colour theory on the Tour de France!

225 Tour de France - stage two - oil on 'dibond'

Stage two and this a view over the Cote de Holme Moss, amazingly beautiful and full of everyone in Yorkshire it would seem!

Non cycling 'daily painting' fans will please excuse me over the next three weeks of my painterly marathon.

224 Tour de France - Yorkshire moors

I have begun my own little Tour de France today, I will be painting Tour de France inspired paintings throughout the tour starting with this wonderfully brooding sky from Yorkshire this afternoon you can see the peloton's bright colours along the bottom behind a dry stone wall. 

Importantly these are also my first paintings on dibond! which is an aluminum and plastic support. I wanted to make these tdf paintings on a surface that mirrors the materials used in he sport.

223 Pencil sharpening

I have always loved he shapes that pencil sharpeners make. I used to, and still do, enjoy getting all my pencils out and give them a good old sharpen. Even easier now I have an electric one!

I 'think' this little multiple painting is finished, might add a couple more bits if I feel like it.. The Tour de France begins tomorrow and I am planning to paint alongside those plucky cyclist chaps! More about that tomorrow.

222 Ukulele off cut

This is an offcut of walnut from the neck of the ukulele that I made last year.

Which was by far the best thing I have ever made out of wood!

221 Off cut

I save a lot of offcuts of wood from things I have made or taken apart. I get some odd looks from my friends.... But even I don't know why I saved this offcut!

220 Branch

A branch from a bit of tree pruning. Providing a nice balance for the lolly pop stick.