paintings prints and stuff

Spring at Hartshill Hayes, watercolour and mixed media in Stillman & Birn A4 Beta Hardback sketchbook The family went off walking through the bluebell woods. which are looking absolutely gorgeous at the moment,   I sat at the top of the steep hill sketching.   Spring - a month late - is finally here and we had a few beautiful days.  It was warm and a bank holiday, bringing out lots of walkers, picknickers and those just wanting to sit in the sunshine - I left them out as it's the landscape that interests me. I used watercolour, coloured pencil, conte pencil, Derwent sienna drawing pencil, white Daler Rowney acrylic ink, touch of gouache .......and the kitchen sink! I have a few bottles of the FW acrylic ink and really like it but hadn't bought the white.   I asked one of my students how opaq.ue it is - I think he has the full set - and he said very .  So I ordered one - and it is :>)/   Just what I needed.  Even white ...

 Detail  I have always liked the calligraphic tangle of the hedges when they are sihouetted against the sky.   Recent snowfall meant even more opportunities with amazing light and the landscape simplified and hidden by the snow, throwing hedges into relief. Above is a detail of a double page sketch in the lovely Stillman and Birn Beta A4 hardback sketchbook.  This paper is so forgiving and the watercolour works beautifully with it.  It allowed me to work through wet washes with charcoal pencil - something that tears many papers, leaving holes.  Some of the hedge is paint, some tinted charcoal. First snow, more on the way, winter light: silhouetted hedges in watercolour and Derwent tinted charcoal in a Stillman and Birn A4 beta hardback sketchbook The earlier warm golden glow of the low sun is covered by clouds, threatening more snow to come.   The spiky calligraphic marks of the hedge and the underlying form of the bank, w...

Late afternoon light on snowy fields, a flock of birds suddenly took to the sky, watercolour and mixed media in Stillman and Birn Beta Hardback sketchbook Another in the series trying to capture the fleeting dramatic light on fresh snow and to get to grips with the sheer amount of liquid my new brush holds! This one is difficult to photograph as the photos tend to lose the subtle colours on the hillside and darken the sky just a fraction too much. This involved Derwent tinted charcoal pencils used with watercolour and a tiny touch of oil pastel in a Stillman and Birn Beta sketchbook with its lovely heavy paper. I'm not sure what the birds were - starlings or pigeons? And a watercolour version of the hedge:   Again it is done with watercolour plus tinted  charcoal pencils.

Painting from memory; a fabulous late afternoon with fresh snowfall, low sun throwing apricot through and bouncing off the dark clouds and the snow. I stopped on the way home to look at the gorgeous light on the landscape.  The furrows and tyre tracks in the ploughed field made a beautiful pattern on the hillside, with smooth snow n the adjacent field. The low sun threw apricot light on the snow and shone through the dark clouds. It didn't last long.   By the time I'd driven for maybe 5 minutes it was gone, the sky was all dark clouds or grey.  So this is from memories.  I did take some photos but didn't get them out when doing this and the previous one, I started it off in the Pen and Ink app The image was then imported into Sketch Club and I painted it on a layer below with some final touches on a layer above the 'pen' sketch. I like this ability to use layers - it replicated using a watercolour wash over a pen sketch and then using a little...

Travelling home in the late afternoon the light was beautiful. The pattern of ridges and tyre marks in a ploughed field made sweeping patterns, defining the form of the land. The low sun reflected apricot colours on clouds and snow. And then a flock of birds took off from the field, making a beautiful moment even more special. I have to do some paintings from this, but for now I've just had time to do some sketches on the iPad. This is a test post from the iPad so I'm hoping it works ok.

Tangled undergrowth, a sketch done with the Sketch Club app on an ipad This App was highly recommended to me and I'm so glad.  It has all sorts of features that I want - the ability to use layers, to import images done in other apps, layer options much like Photoshop, a good range of marks including some of Mr Doobs , (a free online app that you can use on a pc) and more.  It really is a very versatile one.  There are good options on resolution and file types.  It's extremely easy to use, very intuitive. The ability to work onto images done in other apps (or of course your photos) extends the creative possibilities enormously. Below is an experiment with drawing in lettering, not a great drawing but it demonstrates the fluidity with which the writing moves.  This has lots of potential in images and design.  I input the words happy birthday and then simply treated the text like line, to draw the flowers .  They repeat endlessly.  Cool?...

Watercolour and coloured pencil, approx 7.5 x 9.5 ins This one was done yesterday as a class demo.   Last week we'd looked at how various artists handled trees and undergrowth.   This week we looked at the sketchbooks of John Blockley, David Hockney, Kurt Jackson and David Prentice, also the line and wash work that Sue Lewington does. Then they wanted a demo of birches to see how I worked and discuss methods, order, techniques etc. It was done straight into watercolour, no preliminary drawing with pencil, with a mix of White Nights and W&N artists pans , on heavy watercolour paper, type unknown as it was donated by one of the class.  There are slight touches of watercolour pencils in there too. There has been a lot of this sort of light on my journey to and from work lately - brooding skies ahead but sunlight where I am, making the landscape glow.  This particular section is on a highish plateau - the countryside isn't actually this flat roun...