paintings prints and stuff

Vivien Blackburn's work in the Urban/Rural show We've just hung a group show at the The Eye Project, Urban/Rural show.  If you want to come and see it it's on for a month - well worth seeing, 11 lovely artists and some fabulous work. Those large canvasses are 40 inches square. There are rural landscapes, flowerscapes, intriguing textile work including a large knitted building, abstracts .... something for everyone. It's in the gallery below the cafe in the Adult Education Centre at the top of Wellington street, Leicester, opposite Fenwicks.  Meet the Arttists day is Saturday 1st April 10-2.  Come and have a chat with us?

Sketch in acrylic ink, tinted graphite and a touch of coloured pencil I currently have all my classes looking at trees at the moment - considering the individuality of them, looking at various artists past and contemporary.  Contemporary includes some friends and also artists I don't know but admire , these include Bridget Hunter. Glen Heath, David Parfitt, David Prentice, David Tress, Kurt Jackson, Shirley Trevena, Cheryl Culver and lots more. I don't have time to add links, sorry,  but google them if you are interested?  Past includes Mondrian, Klimt, Van Gogh, Monet etc etc etc  I really like Mondrian's trees and Klimt too. There was a page in a sketchbook where I had experimented with tinted graphite, doing a moody image of rain approaching across the bay.  It was just a tester and was quite boring.  I decided to work over it, keeping it as background and working in grey and white acrylic ink (plus a little more tinted graphite and a touch of co...

St Ives from Gwithian Towans. sketch in S&B Delta sketchbook, watercolour, mixed media Another plein air sketch from the recent trip down to Cornwall.   Moody days are so much more interesting to paint sometimes than blue skies. Done in the S&B sketchbook with watercolours and Derwent tinted charcoal pencil, which is water soluble. I wish I was there now!  There is a grass that grows on the clifftops that goes the most beautiful scarlet at this time of year, I'd so like to be sketching there. More to follow ......

 Abstract flower, A3 on Khadi paper with watercolour and mixed media Untitled as yet - any ideas? I went to an artist's talk last week and she demonstrated how she did her large scale flower paintings.  A good talk but  I wasn't keen on her methods or results - too methodical and literal for me, involving tracing photographs and carefully colouring in between the lines with layers of the same colour - but it did make me feel like doing another abstracted flower painting and just playing with colour.  So instead of working on the seascapes, I did this.  It's still subject to change!  there may be updates. Possible crop? It's based loosely on a slightly smaller pastel I did some years back.   That was loosely based on some beautiful bearded iris in the garden of a house in France we'd stayed in. The A3 Khadi paper I used is very absorbent and the paint sinks into it.  It also has a strong woven sort of texture.  The ...

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 ...

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 ....

 Swithland Woods, detail.  Inktense, coloured pencil and a little ink  I sketched for a short while in Swithland Woods yesterday.   I'd taken my Inktense pencils - and lovely as they are I really really felt the need for oil paints to cope with dappled light and the ability to put back light over dark.  I'll have to get back there with my oils. Swithland Woods, S&B Beta A4 sketchbook, unfinished The sketch is unfinished because the background leaves got overworked and fussy as I tried to get the deep shade and brightly lit flashes of sunlit leaves - and the light changed dramatically, making the trees that had interesting light on them a few minutes before, simply silhouettes.  It would have spread further over onto the right hand page.   Woods are rather like seascapes though, where you have to work fast .  Oil paint would have let me do it in the time and with simple direct marks.  Pencil is so much slower even ...

Masquerade Roses contre jour, watercolour and coloured pencil sketch in 7x7 inch S&B sketchbook This was a challenge to myeself to do some blowsy roses, strongly backlit by the bright day outside, creating deep shadows on leaves and window frame (which I simplified to abstract geometric shapes).  Flowers aren't something I do very often.  They are climbing masquerade roses that I remember buying for £1.60 as a sickly little plant a few years back, that have now spread yards along a fence and flower and flower.  They start out yellow and gradually the red creeps in and takes over as the flowers open. The route I took was to play with the intense shadow, lost edges and brightly backlit elements.  Interestingly this week A&I magazine (July issue - in May !)  was about painting light, featuring a series of different painters.  One, Edward Seago whose main interest was the depiction of light, said that there were 2 ways of tackling bright light: ...

Experimenting with still life - jazz in paint.  Watercolour and oil pastel I meet up with a group of friends, fellow painters, once a month and we critique each others work, talk about art, exhibitions. artists etc and put on exhibitions ourselves.  We all work very differently.   We decided to challenge ourselves to tackle a subject we rarely do - still life - and each find an angle on it that makes it interesting to us.  We've talked about doing a project on it for some time and decided to stop talking and start doing : >).  We all have to take an A3 painting to the next meeting.  This is mine so far. As usual, the photograph doesn't bring out some of the subtle colour changes : >( This is based on sketches I did a year or two ago- you can see some of them here , here , here and here . This one was done with watercolour on Khadi rag paper (A3) with some gold, copper,  orange and irridescent pale blue Sennelier oil pastel scri...

A sketch done looking across at the Farne Islands from the far end of the beach at Bamburgh, mixed media Another from the Norhumbria sketchbook.   A blue windy day.

The Cheviot Hills, in Northumbria, Derwent tinted charcoal pencils with a little of their watercolour pencil.  S&B  Delta sketchbook Another one from the hills, higher up than the previous one, Late afternoon with the light about to go and passing drizzly showers.  But beautiful.   I love the high hills with the dramatic, steep slopes carved by glaciers, sheep and the occasional tough breed of cattle.  Fast streams, waterfalls, isolated farms, single track road .....  I love it! I scribble a little watercolour pencil to get the underlying clear green and the basis for the sky and then worked in Derwent tinted chyarcoal - it's perfect for the colour, mood and texture of this landscape.   I really like them. Again in the lovely S&B Delta sketchbook/ And there's more ....

Up in the hills of the Northumbria National Park, above Alwinton, Watercolour/mixed media in A4 S&B Delta sketchbook I absolutely loved it up in the hills of the National Park. As the single track road rose higher, the land grew wilder, bleaker and more dramatic.  The land folded, carved by glaciers and drystone walls zigzagged, showing the contours of the land. I painted a couple higher up as the sun was going down - I'll show those later. This one is a mix of watercolour, conte pencil,. coloured pencil, tinted charcoal pencil and a bit of white ink.   I wanted to get the different textures quickly and mixing media was the best way for me to achieve this. Below are a couple of photos from higher in the hills. I would definitely like to revisit this area.  The landscape and history are wonderful.

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...

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 ...

Across the bay, approaching rain, graphite stick and watercolour in Stillman and Birn Beta hardback sketchbook. The weather has been what the Scots call dreich - grey. rain, sleet, cold wind, grim - and it seems to have crept into this work! It's done from memory of watching the rain approaching across the bay, making the sea and headland almost disappear.   The foreground will soon disappear as well as the rain arrives but for the moment shows more clearly. I put a few pale washes of watercolour down and then worked over it with a graphite stick from Derwent, something I haven't used in ages.   I really enjoyed the veils of tone and drawing back into it with an eraser.   I don't know if you can read the elements in it?  (Sky, headland, sea, waves, beach) The new XL tinted graphite sticks would be great for this, I can't wait to get them .  Has anyone tried them yet?

This is somewhere I've sketched before as part of the waterways/Leicestershire project. It's an old packhorse bridge over flood meadows where the river Biam meets the river Soar. It used to be 200 yards long but only 50 survive. A lot was demolished when the canal and railway were built through the site. The buttresses sticking out are cut waters, protecting the bridge from the pressure of floods, keeping it standing for 600 years. Nearby is a field still showing the ridges of medieval strip farming, the canal and a railway track that is now a path for strollers and cyclists. It makes a route that cuts right across the city, joining with the canal towpath, through these meadows, industrial areas, through parks, the backs of houses, by my old university, finally reaching water meadows on the other side of town. This started with watercolour and continued with ballpoint pen, art bars, graphitints and gouache ... The kitchen sink may be in there somewhere.  Watercolour a...

a flock of birds rise:  watercolour and mixed media, detail This is another look at the wonderful late afternoon light over the first snowfall of the year.  Getting the intense glow of the sun wasn't easy - until I treated myself to a tube of opera rose from Winsor and Newton .   It is intense !  mixed with transparent yellow it glows .  Thank you to my friend Robyn Sinclair for introducing me to this colour - another friend  Liz Steele also bought it on her recommendation and has fallen in love with it too! The whole painting: It isn't easy to see the glazes and subtle colour changes in this so, further details below:   This was done in the big A3 moleskine watercolour folio sketchbook.   A lovely size to use.   Unlike the S&B sketchbook though, I had problems with the page buckling, meaning a lot of moving the book to prevent gulleys of deeper colour settling - not good (it did dry f...

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.

error corrected - that doorway, gouache and tinted charcoal pencil Looking at that doorway again, I realised that with talking, teaching and not paying proper attention, I'd got the proportions of that downpipe way out!  I'd been reading it as a dark piece of wall (working from a photo in the warmth  in class on this one and I doubt if I'd have been so silly if I'd been working from life, bad print on typing paper too). So .... it was a case of washing out the offending area to narrow the pipe and then adding the sliver of bricks  and matching the suggestion of the steel shutters.  Thank goodness it's easy to lift paint from the S&B paper because of its brilliant sizing.  So today's class had a demo of washing out mistakes!