paintings prints and stuff

My well used, watercolour box - the hinge is broken on one side and the lid is held on by gaffer tape and it needs a bit of a clean up! When I did the post on my oil painting plein air kit, I said I'd do a follow up on what I take if I'm going to work plein air with watercolour and mixed media.   You really don't need to buy special kits and they will never be quite 'right' for what you want to take. Here it is  .............. The Paintbox : I hesitate to show this grubby specimen!   but this is the true state of it so I'll be honest!    :>)   I bought this at an art materials fair years and years ago. I don 't use a small travel size watercolour box because I like a wider variety of colours to choose from  - and quite honestly the size/weight difference isn't huge - the weight comes from the bottle of water not the paints.  It's a White Nights set of full pans in a box that held 24, see above.   The central s...

detail of the sketch below   A quick sketch on a very windy day with Rotring pen and watersoluble ink, with a little brush pen (waterproof ink) and a touch of gouache.  I do like watersoluble ink for those lovely washes.    The Crowns, Botallack, pen and ink sketch in Canson sketchbook.  Vivien Blackburn And turning 180 degrees this was the skyline, with another ruined mine engine house in the distance. This one was done in carbon pencil.

Winter: Blue skies mixed media Another one in this series - this is the whole image at 13x16 but it will be cropped to 11x14. Winter, collage, mixed media I worked further on this one and this is how it looks now. Looking at this one and listening to opinions and weighing them up (thanks) I've made alterations to this one - there's actually a little bit more intensity of colour IRL - but you can see I've changed the trees tonality and introduced a touch more water. I also added hints of scrubby bushes on the hillside. Towards Dusk remains the same and so does Still Pool. So - that's the final 5 images. What do you think? other work on trees can be seen here

the tree with added colour I worked further on the tree - and it's a little bigger now at nearly 14 inches. I kept the colour range limited but added Pitt pencil in a warm sienna colour and a touch of icy blue mixed into the white. Better? or should have been left alone! ?

Old tree growing in amongst rocks and a drystone wall, charcoal, carbon pencil and chinagraph pencil I painted this tree in ink and watercolour a few years ago and decided to do a slightly larger version in charcoal. I added carbon pencil for the darkest and most calligraphic marks and white chinagraph pencil for the highlights, on a soft beige pastel paper. I liked the way it merged into the rocks, almost part of them. The tree itself makes me think of Japanese prints, something about the gnarled branches and the pine needles. I've been really tied up with work and family health issues so it was good to be drawing again :>)