paintings prints and stuff

South Stack, near Holyhead, A3 pastel plein air  This is at the framers at the moment,  in preparation for an exhibition, along with lots of other work from the week painting in Wales.  It will be going in a lime washed frame. Vivid memories of a lovely day sketching on the cliff with friends somewhere near, doing their own views - that's a steep drop down via the path and then another steep cliff edge.  One friend was working down there, another much higher up looking way down at the lighthouse (just out of sight on the right).  What did we do before we had mobile phones?  so easy to coordinate coffee breaks and moving on when we spread out and aren't near each other. I used a sheet of Sennelier sanded paper for this and the Rembrandt and Inscribe pastels I'd thrown in at the last moment.  Oh dear, I did NOT like the Sennelier paper - luckily I'd swapped a sheet with a friend as she didn't like it and I got to try it without having to buy a ...

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...

Reeds and winter branches, Groby Pool. Mixed media. Vivien Blackburn A quick sketch of that filigree of tangled branches and reeds against the water, done in acrylic paint, ink, biro and pencils. It was COLD!

Old, very deep, flooded slate quarry, Swithland Woods, carbon pencil on a rich cream paper, size A4, Vivien Blackburn The Charnwood Forest area of Leicestershire is very very ancient rock and the woods in this part are pitted with these old slate quarries - very deep and quite dangerous. I've meant to draw here for a long time and thought it would make a nice change from the canals and river in my waterways project with it's woods and steep hillside - the rocky side is hidden in shadow. I may try to get there at a different time of day when it's lit up. I also plan to visit other flooded quarries, bigger and deeper - though I do like this little one. I've mislaid my little battery operated eraser, which would have been perfect to draw those light branches back in through charcoal - so I had to carefully(ish) leave them unshaded. I think this might make it onto canvas as I like the composition - what do you think?

Aylestone Meadows, pollarded willow, detail I did this mixed media sketch in the leather sketchbook, it's smaller than the one on Watermarks (link at end of post) It didn't photograph or scan very well on the hand made paper so I've shown a detail above which shows the glowing colours. The late afternoon sun glowed amber on the pollarded willows but the surrounding landscape was all cold pale blue greys and dried reeds and grasses. It was a very cold day. Pollarded Willow, Aylestone Meadows, Vivien Blackburn I'm planning to revisit this area over the course of the year, looking at it as the seasons and light change. I was sketching near these willows once when I saw a grass snake come swimming down towards me and come out just next to me through the reeds - he just slithered leisurely on his way, totally ignoring me. There is a larger painting of the same trees on the Watermarks blog. Do you revisit a place, studying it in different lights? Tina has written ...

Across the Beach. Hazy Sunshine. coloured pencil. 10 x 6.5 inches. Vivien Blackburn A busy day and no time to concentrate on the canvasses so I did a bit of drawing with coloured pencils on grey card - one of those sunny days with thin translucent white clouds veiling the sky. You may be getting bored with this view :>) - sorry - but it's interesting to me to try to capture it in all the weathers and lights I saw. I do love the light and the way it changes colours. Also to experiment with different media as the effects are so different. .

Approaching Rain. mixed media. about 10 ins square. Vivien Blackburn One day I sat looking out across the beach watching approaching rain clouds - the rain started out to sea and I watched as it came sweeping in creating a misty silver haze in front of the sea, then in front of the cliffs, bleaching out colour, and finally it hit our windows. This sketch is an attempt to catch that day - with a nod to Hiroshige :>). http://static.artinaclick.com/titles/o/oha/ohashibridgeintherain/ Teaching and Learning: I've had recent discussions with friends about teaching styles - how we teach or are taught - the styles that we responded best to as students ourselves, tutors who really motivated us and the teaching methods that taught us most. I'm going to do a series of posts about teaching and learning styles and the way I teach. During my teacher training the psychologist who clicked for me was Maslow - his hierarchy of needs with its emphasis on the physical and emotional comfort of ...

Evening Light across the Beach. Vivien Blackburn. Charcoal and coloured pencil This is the charcoal drawing on grey paper that I showed you unfinished here: http://vivienb.blogspot.com/2008/02/seascapes-update-february.html (scan down past the painting to it) I said that I was mulling over whether to simply use white pastel for highlights and keep it monochrome or add colour - and if colour what medium??? I decided to try coloured pencils over the charcoal and see how they worked - they worked! I wanted to keep the colours very muted, this kind of evening light softens and dulls colours and the cliff was deeply shadowed and backlit. I worked in multiple glazes of colours to softly build white, blues, mauve, umber, sienna, peach, orange, ochres and a little green on the cliff top which doesn't show much onscreen as it's only a little. The peachy colours are a little less orangey and more peach than they appear here. The clouds have blues and browns in them. The light blues in ...

start of a new seascape 40 inch square canvas I've started on some new seascapes. They are based on the sketches I did in Cornwall and memories of the beach at all times of day with the waves crashing and the light and weather constantly changing. I'm abstracting from them - I want these paintings to be about how I feel about the spirit of the area and not simply a realistic interpretation of it. I now have to let these early marks dry before I can continue and as I'm still having to work extra hours it won't be a fast process :( start of a new beach painting 30 inch square canvas These are at a very very early stage and have a long way to go. Hopefully a lot of these marks will remain in the finished piece but there are many layers and adjustments to go - I don't have a clear pre-worked-out result in my head but simply an idea of the feeling of the particular weather and light and moment that I want to recapture. As the painting develops it may change dramatically...

Mawgan Porth, Cornwall copyright Vivien Blackburn watercolour, charcoal pencil, coloured pencil, oil pastel This is a lovely beach on the north coast of Cornwall, just a couple of miles from where I lived as a child. The light on the wet sand and pools is beautiful and constantly changing. A small stream comes down the steep valley and joins the sea here, skirting the edge of this cliff. Steep - very steep - narrow roads lead up each side with hairpin bends making driving interesting when you meet a bus or lorry :) This is the morning light - the cliffs opposite were lit with a honey/amber glow in the mornings. In the afternoons they were shadowed and darker, almost silhouettes where the rocks are dark. The cliffs reflect in the pools. Down near the low water line there's a pattern of pools very close to each other and quite deep - up to 2 feet deep - carved out by the crashing waves. I remember these well from childhood - when paddling you could suddenly find the water that had ...

Yesterday I did a couple of really quick sketches of the old Packhorse Bridge at Aylestone. It dates from at least the 1400's, possibly earlier. It's a long stone bridge, originally 200 metres but only 50 remain, with 11 arches, some slightly pointed and gothic looking and 'cutwaters' - buttresses that stand out like the prows of boats that presumable 'cut' the water and relieved the pressure on the stonework in floods. It's about one cart width with little refuges over the cutwaters to allow pedestrians to move out of the way of oncoming carts. aside: look at this very funny blog to see an interesting story sort of related to this :>) http://idlethoughtsofanidlewoman.blogspot.com/2007/03/le-derriere-du-cheval.html In the past, marshland was a bigger danger and obstacle to travel than rivers - rivers often have a place where they can be forded safely or bridges can be built. Marshland stretches over larger areas and is impassable. 50 metres of the bridge...

Today I went back to Union Wharf to look again at the tangle of boats, shining water and expensive loft apartments. This is a photograph of the sketchbook - the scanner (image below) didn't pick up quite all of the image but shows the colour, composition and marks better. The book was too small (11 inches square) to fit in the whole of the tangle of boats - there were lots just below that lamp that I couldn't fit in. I need to go back with more time and a larger sketchbook. There was a colder wind blowing today but I was sheltered from it and it was positively hot in the sun. I had thought it would be a nice place to live but after sitting there on a weekday with a car alarm going off, another car parking with a loud radio playing and children passing on a walk with their parents from time to time and shouting to each other ..... maybe not . At weekends I bet it can be pretty noisy. I like peace. I'd like to get out into the countryside now and look at the river with the fr...

The boat looked a bit chopped off so I added a bit more to the length - as I go along I may do some long thin horizontal images, this marina cries out for that treatment.

After teaching this morning I decided to make a start on my project and do some sketching at this marina on the canal. It's only a couple of miles from where I teach. These were done in an 11 inch square sketchbook, the first with the Lyra skintones set of coloured pencils and the second started off to be a pen and ink sketch with a Rotring pen - but I wanted colour, so I finished it with coloured pencils. I was there for a couple of hours and it was lovely to sit in the sunshine and enjoy the warmth. A lovely friendly lady brought me a leaflet on the history of the marina. It was a originally a wharf of warehouses for goods brought in by the narrowboats, then a woodyard, then a marina for a boat hire firm and finally they've revamped the warehouse and made them into these des res apartments. The marina was buzzing with owners working on their boats - a few chatted to me, others left me alone. The nearby Grand Union Canal goes all the way to London and this canal was built to c...

Later in the year I need some work for an exhibtion where the subject is reflections and I wondered if it was worth looking through my photographs to see if there was anything there I would want to work from. As I've said before, I don't normally work from photos but I fancy giving it another go - I knew I had some images that I like and maybe ..... Anyway these are the images that I found quite quickly that would meet the brief. I love the coast so naturally a lot of them are to do with the sea :>) I really liked these seagulls waiting for the incoming tide on a grey afternoon. I like the subtle limited range of colours - watercolour and CP???? Watercolour and pastel? Then there is the boat lying beached on the wet mud with all the lovely sky blues in the reflection of the sky - something out of nothing. Or the boat in the harbour with the lovely old stone walls - pastel and charcoal over acrylic or watercolour? It's the busiest of the images with all the people jostli...