Adventures In A Painted Landscape

I think you have hung your paintings wonky, and I am not impressed …

paintings, settee and reclining dog

More watercolour experiments … After a full month of rain, any light breaking though has been full of drama especially towards dusk. These still aren’t what I’d hoped they’d be but the process is encouraging me to be more daring with colour. I just haven’t been able to work solidly due to dayjob concerns getting in the way. Oh yes, and I foolishly decided to have a go at the NaNoWriMo ‘write a novel in a month’ thing and that distracted me from painting as well. I did manage to complete the challenge on time but now have a badly-written novel and a paucity of paintings (also, odd words like ‘paucity’ keep appearing in my mind).

Nolde actually seems to have invented many of his marvellous pictures while sitting in a darkened room. I have yet to try that, as I’ve been basing paintings on what’s going on in the landscape. Silly really, because at the moment there’s much more chance of sitting in darkened rooms for hours than there is of seeing anything outdoors!

Dregs of Sunset

In Hobdale

Finally, some of the paintings are dry. All are 6×8 plein air oils carried out in quickly changing conditions!

a gnarled and twisted hill

ran out of time - crazy sky!

light breaking through

hurried sketch

hills and sky in turmoil

low cloud - after slight fettling at home

Well I’ve managed to foolishly run out of both canvas and white paint! So a hurried order has been placed and in the meantime I’ve been doing some oil sketches on pieces of paper, ekeing out the last few blobs of Flake White, and trying to look at the world upside-down as much as possible.

These are some of the sketches that resulted. I’ve scanned them now that they’re dry enough as my photos were so hopelessly dark and blurry in comparison with the real paintings. Everything is really colourful at the moment and lots of hay-making is adding yellow to the landscape. Also, looking at things upside-down brings out a lot of the blue and violet in the distance for some reason.

Green into yellow - 6x8, oil on paper

High Summer 6x8 oil on paper

Sky Colours - 6x8, oil on paper

Managed to paint a few more pictures in spite of having the World’s Most Unpleasant Cold – not helped by my ‘kill or cure’ tactics of carrying on climbing up the hills regardless. Finally I gave in and rested – and it seems to be working so far …

Here’s one, inspired by the stacks of matching clouds that drift past Holme Fell. They’re almost like sets of clouds – like a nest of tables … a nest of clouds … (can you tell it’s late??!)

A nest of clouds

And here’s another one that I need to take a better picture of as this is suffering from camera shake … It’s of some very bruised-looking clouds one evening.

Bruised clouds painting (now non-shaky!)

Both oil on canvas, 6″x8″.

It’s been soooo cold that I’ve been forced to paint the view through the window – with varying results:

through the window

Finally had a bit of weather where it was bearable sitting on the hill, so I went out and came back with this:

finally - a plein air piece

Finally managed to take a photo this morning. We still have snow today but only on the ground, thankfully – the sky is clear and blue. I had some fun wading through seven foot drifts up on the hill but was embarrassed to find people watching me as I shrieked and larked about with Tilly, imagining we were alone. And more snow is forecast!

small paintings (6x8) on the wall