Adventures In A Painted Landscape

Still finding it difficult to make time to paint and finding the results are often iffy, but that is how it goes! I liked the colours of this evening sketch, if not the drawing/tones/much else!

quick evening sketch of hills, oil 6x8

I have been trying to capture something about this lovely valley for ages and maybe this would make a good composition – but the colour didn’t really happen (and has been bleached out even more by the camera flash).

attempt to paint Crosedale, oil 6x8

The weather is set to remain fair for a couple more days so hopefully I can produce some more paintings before the end of the month. Off to read about Emil Nolde to get my colour inspiration back …

I’ve only been managing to do very quick sketches in the recent cold weather. It’s back to oils again, for now, but trying to be more adventurous with the colour.

Just trying to make notes in paint, really:

snow under red sky

odd little clouds

arrangement of snow shadows

The photos are a bit blurry due to the flash reflecting off wet paint.

… painting experiments are proceeding, involving watercolour and paper.

Unfortunately, nothing has emerged so far that’s good enough to share. It’s a long time since I used any watercolour but slowly I’m remembering its ways. Using very thick paper the process isn’t so dissimilar from oils in that you can work on a piece for quite a long time, adding and removing paint – but I hope to become a bit more spontaneous (the difficult thing) as I improve.

The idea is that watercolour will be used for the initial painting, hopefully capturing the vivid colours I want. Then I can remake the piece in oils trying to capture the brightness and light of the watercolour. Well, that’s the idea … we shall see. So far, the watercolour version is capturing the muddy murk of my worst oils, but I shall persevere.

A larger painting I’m thinking of listing on Etsy – I haven’t put any big pieces in my shop as yet.

This shows a view down Settlebeck Gill.

Plunging down the Gill

I’ve been going through one of those awkward transitional patches with my work in the last week or so. Paintings seem to take on a life of their own, seem out of my control and turn out interesting but odd.

Usually this means something is changing and a subsequent period of new, improved paintings will follow. It’s tricky staying motivated through it though – more so now that I’m trying to sell some of my work as I feel hesitant about putting my ‘ugly children’ out into the world. Poor vulnerable, misunderstood things …

Thinking about making this post I decided to photograph the ‘weird ones’ I’ve been doing lately but because I was so engrossed in it all today I ended up painting well past dusk, tweaking some plein airs that hadn’t quite worked and trying to rescue some of the crazier pieces.

So, the photos didn’t come out (the wet paint reflecting didn’t help either) apart from this one of the wall at the end of my tiny studio. These pictures aren’t the strange ones – they’re ones that I like for one reason or another and decided to display to please myself. Maybe I’ll mount them all in one huge frame one day … although cutting a mount with all those windows will be a bit of an undertaking. Um, I forgot that one pinned underneath. It’s an interloper – just a quick sketch out on the hill that happened to capture some of the colours at dusk quite well but that was all.

My studio wall in glorious technicolour