paintings prints and stuff

Ogwen Valley, Low cloud on the mountains, A3 mixed media After the charcoal sketch done in the morning my friends walked up to a higher lake, I painted quietly on my own.  So peaceful with the clouds drifting by, the steep hills cut with tumbling waterfalls and the single track road winding up and down throught the rocks.  I love the drama of the contours of the land and the rocks, barely covered by soil. We really didn't only have rainy days!  though the mixed weather meant beautiful skies and challenges. Big black Welsh cattle with their huge hooves lumbered by, followed by calves scrambling uncertainly down those steep hillsides.  I'd always assumed that this was the old, original road (main road is across the valley) but a lovely friendly lady told me it was built by a lord of the manor so that his guests had a scenic carriage ride when they came to stay. Just as I finished this, the friends phoned to say they were back down the mountain and we join...

 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 ...

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 :>)

What to do while the paint dries .....  rapid sketches of students and/or fellow painters :>)   ( and some older ones:)

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...

Bamburgh Castle from the dunes.   Watercolour and mixed media in Stillman and Birn Delta sketchbook Another sketch from the break in Northumbria.   The view of Bamburgh castle from the dunes is great - it is huge , looming silhouetted on its headland above the sweeping beach. The textures of the marram grass, thistles and other plants interested me equally.  Working fast was essential  as we only had limited time up there.  To get the textures, the luminosity of the sea and sky and the looming power of the castle, I ended up using watercolours, a little grey ink, a little gouache, conte pencil, white acrylic ink and some coloured pencil. The first (very quick) sketch was from lower down and further back in the dunes, done where I parked the car, and done using grey ink and charcoal.  I used twigs to draw with the ink - it gives a lovely range of marks that are freer and looser than pens.  And they are free : >) Bamburgh cas...

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 ...

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...

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...