paintings prints and stuff

2 studies from the clifftop between Hells Mouth and Portreath in different light, watercolour/mixed media in S&B Delta sketchbook I do love the changing light and the different colours and moods.   I could paint along here again and again through the seasons and each image would be different.   Flowers, sea colour, skies always new. There was a massive cliff fall at Hells Mouth that I didn't know about until I got home - thankfully!   Video here - do watch, it gives an idea of the scale and drama.  I ended up mostly using my watercolours on this trip for some reason, though I had taken oils and used them  a little.  I made the decision early on to mainly work in the S&B sketchbook and fill it, which I did : >)  rather than try to complete larger works in changing light.   I can work from these sketches at home to produce the larger works, with time to consider format/medium etc at leisure. Already I'm ...

St Ives.  An illustrational one as a workout for a commission. I need to do a large one of this beach for my daughter - a very overdue Christmas present! Keeping track of those buildings and trying to distort it a little to make it wrap around was not the simplest!  The big version won't be identical as it will evolve a life of its own though it will be similar - but she wants the family on the beach 'recognisable and flattering of all of them', while showing all the buildings etc .....!!!  No pressure then. This is small, in the S&B Delta sketchbook, A5.  On this latest trip to Cornwall I used watercolours, pencil, coloured pencils, oil paint, ink, conte, gouache and more on various pages.   It works with them all :>)

The tip of the headland with St Ives, from Gwithian Towans, watercolour and mixed media in S&B Delta sketchbook A cloudy day, looking across the estuary. That's the tip of St Ives just showing across the bay. Done mainly in watercolour with a touch of white gouache and some Derwent tinted charcoal pencils. Sometimes not-such-good-weather is more interesting to paint.

Godrevey Lighthouse , watercolour/mixed media in S&B Delta sketchbook A chance to sketch fairly intensively on a trip to Cornwall.  Happy. I was feeling very rusty, particularly with oils as life has been hectic and I haven't had much time lately for plein air sketching. There was plenty of passing cloud and the day was windy, the sea intensely blue.  This is a corner of Cornwall I wasn't familiar with, so it was lovely to discover new places.  There were so many beautiful spots to paint within a very small distance from where we were staying. I was painting from the Towans Cornish for dunes - most of the coast has cliffs but being on an estuary (St Ives is across the bay), there is a large area of high, grassy, shrub and flower covered dunes. the highest in Europe apparently. More to follow ....

Bosworlas farm from the valley.  Watercolour and mixed media. Just a quick post to prove that I have been working!   Life has been a bit hectic. The Cornish farmhouse where we stayed one year, on the edge of the moor, above a rushing stream that tumbles down to the sea a little further down at Porth Nanven, below, one of my favourite places.  This painting of the farm  is currently on show at Leicester Museum and Art Gallery on New Walk. Porth Nanven, the Brisons and Cot Valley Now to finish a painting I need done  urgently ......

Porth Nanven, evening, Derwent charcoal in Stillman and Birn A4 hardback sketchbook  Another from Cornwall.  Attempting to catch the silvery dazzle of light on water.  A little stream tumbles down the Cot Valley to the beach below - Porth Nanven. The new Derwent charcoal sticks are luscious to use and there is a little of their charcoal pencil in there too.  The photo makes the horizon slope - the drawing doesn't . S&B sketchbooks are now available from Jacksons in the UK.   The Beta  paper is lovely , heavy and really well primed so that it takes any medium I choose. Epsilon and Zeta are smooth and beautiful for pen and ink work.  They will take watercolour but if you want to use a lot of  media and layers, then the others are more for you. Has anyone tried the new Derwent charcoals and graphites?  or the S&B sketchbooks?

Sunset at Sennen Cove, oil on deep sided canvas, 12 ins square I did a series of sunsets in watercolour and oil of the sunsets and it really brought out how cameras distort the colours of sunsets and aren't really at all helpful.  The silhouetted rocks and breakwater lose all colour as well. They make beautiful pictures in their own right - but they aren't the reality of the experience at all. In the photographs, there is far more red (which there wasn't in reality) and the sun is white.   In fact , the sun was blazing red and the skies were a range of softer reds and peaches and sometimes soft yellows.   So the canvasses were done quickly while the memory of the colours was still fresh.   There were vivid pale blue ripples against the darker shadows and subtle reflections of the reds in the water.  Those electric ripples were beautiful and just didn't show properly on photos.  These are 2 examples - the actual sunset look...

A sketch done from our holiday cottage in watercolour/mixed media in an A4 S&B sketchboo We had wonderful views from the house, right left and front .... and even the steep hillside/cliff at the back had primroses and bluebells. This is looking sideways when the tide is high, past a row of terraced cottages that climb up the steep track.  That's 'our' garden ..... for a week anyway! I used watercolour with some pen and a few touches of coloured pencil - oh and a little FW white acrylic ink, a new favourite medium, used with a bamboo pen or brush.  It is really opaque and a clear clean white. so useful for surf etc when you've lost the white of the paper in places,   I work fastish, the painting evolves and I don't always retain all the lights so use this or white gouache to regain them.  I like mixing media, choosing whatever will create the marks I want.  I'm trying to catch a spirit of place and have no interest at all in rules about 'pur...

Sennen Cove,. against the light, evening.pen and wash I'm back from Sennen Cove with sketches :>) This one was done with a Tombow dual ended grey pen and a Derwent brushpen to create the washes.   An ideal combination for this kind of light.This is in the S&B hardback Beta sketchbook.  On this holiday I used pen and ink, watercolour, oil paint, some coloured pencil, oil pastel. and charcoal in various sketches and it has handled them all brilliantly.  I do like these books and they are now selling larger sheets of the paper, loose.  Definately something worth trying.

Afternoon light in Sennen Cove.  Watercolour.

Pale, pearly morning, Derwent Artbars, Vivien Blackburn This one was an experiment with Derwent's new Artbars to produce a pale, high key image rather than the vivid colours of some  works shown earlier .   They were equally capable of catching the subtle light of an early morning when colours were pearly pale and delicate. There is a lovely range of pale colours, plus of course the deeper colours which, applied lightly and then washed, will give further variations of soft pale colour.  Some of this was done using quite wet washes, some deliberately leaving marks, some dry crayon drawn through damp washes, some fragments dropped into wet washes, some at the end used dry and left dry.  Whatever was going to make the marks I wanted. Further episodes of the series on essentials in painting and drawing to follow - I've been up to my eyes in family matters lately!

 oil The Guardian have done an article on skies in art with some great paintings mentioned - here . So I thought I'd trawl through some of my sketches of skies ................ Dawn at Sennen Cove, coloured pencil in moleskine sketchbook charcoal watercolour coloured pencil oil charcoal and coloured pencil oil photo, early morning water soluble brush pen oil oil charcoal coloured pencil watercolour We do have such lovely changeable skies and they are fascinating to try to catch - in whatever medium :>)  Done sitting on cliff tops, in the countryside, on the back of the car as it opens flat  ..... very comfortable when sketching alone if I can park with a good view.  Getting out there and looking is essential to understand the layers, the colours, the way light shines through from behind ............ And - if anyone is interested in the jewellery I've been designing and making, I'm beginning to put it on Etsy in my shop These are some yet to be...

 detail from step by step Well ..... secret project is secret no more  : > ) Derwent Artbars Last summer I was asked to take part in testing Derwent's newest baby - Artbars , then in the lab under development.   They will be available in the next couple of weeks and are now on the Derwent website.   Rocks near Porthgwarra, Derwent Artbars, on A2 cartridge paper, Vivien Blackburn It was really interesting being involved in trying them out from the short-stumps-of-colour-and-varied-composition/shape etc at the beginning and following their progression.   I still have a little container of these stumps. In this one, that they commissioned after the initial testing, the only other medium used is a little white gouache for those areas where I didn't retain the white of the paper for the incoming waves.   In other places it is simply the white paper. In the one above,  I was wanting to build an intensity of col...

Newquay Harbour, Rainy Day, 6x3 ins approx More testing of Derwent products and again with the Fisher 400 paper .   I do love this surface for working on. Like the Derwent Coloursoft pencils, the Artist Pencils work beautifully on this sanded paper.  Colours went down richly and overlaid and mixed  really well - whites actually reading as white.   There was a good range of subtle colours that I could choose from to  mix and overlay.    So necessary to achieve the  soft grey green and a hint of pale blue and viridian in the sea, palest pink and cream that shone through the sky a little. It's just a tiny sketch which I wanted to keep loose, not getting into overmuch detail, wanting to catch the misty air and the soft colours on a very small scrap of paper. Not an Emmet in site (old Cornish word for mosquito - now applied to tourists ; >D ) - all quiet with the sea softly rolling in, no wild waves today, and the gentle subtle co...