More Fresh Air

When the opportunity comes to spend time with the paints it should be taken. So while I was out with the oils painting the rocks and beach I found myself with some time left before heading home. Fortunately the watercolour stuff was in the car so I decided to use the little time left to splash some of them as well. Strange thing, when I use oils I like to stand, with watercolour I quite like to sit. I wonder why that might be?

There are some flaws in paint application with this, trying to get another glaze on without checking how dry the layer is makes for problems. Lots of fun to finish the day out.

Another Sea Stack

Recent works in watercolour have interrupted my trips to the beach, but true to form I found time to head out and select one of the many stacks along our coast as a subject. The result is below.

Returning to the same subject matter is providing me with a wealth of material from which I can make judgements about any development that is taking place in my painting and this latest example has given me lots to think about. There is a better range of values in this piece and areas like the sky and the foreground read much better than in some earlier works. I put this down to taking a greater degree of care in blocking in prior to beginning the main painting. It was particularly helpful in establishing the value range and foreground detail. Clearly another set of lessons learned.


Sea Stack, Souter - Oil on canvas board 12" x 10"

Sea Stack

The coast round these parts has a lot of stacks that stand like sentinels facing the North Sea. They have all sorts of interesting shapes and this one has a hole right through it creating an arch. As regular followers will have noticed, it is to the coast that I go most often when I get time to paint and I am very fortunate that there is such good subject material close at hand. The challenge, of course, is doing the wonderful sights some sort of painterly justice. Once again the visit coincided with dull, flat light, for me a painter's nightmare as I try to develop my work on colour, values and knife technique.

I am discovering that the knife is a great tool for rendering rocks and am delighted that it is starting to fit with one of my favourite subjects. Don't know if I'll get out again this week, but I'm going to have to get my watercolour kit in shape as I've got a place on a course starting on September 6th, but more of that in a later post.

Sea Stack - Oil on canvas board 12" x 10"

Taking a Knife to it

Continuing with my knife practice has become the latest mission and so out again at the first opportunity to try it at one of my favourite locations. The stretch of cliffs near Souter lighthouse has all sorts of interesting shapes, but as can be seeen from the photograph taken on the day we can't guarantee decent light. It was windy, so a sheltered cove it had to be, and the light conditions were flat and dull, never the best conditions for me, particularly at the moment when I'm trying to improve colour work and knife technique. The knife lends itself to making bold statements, ideal when the light provides clear tonal demarcations and easily differentiated colour. I think that my hesitancy is evident in some of the passages in this piece. It took longer than usual to paint this, over three hours, and only rarely did any light get through. The thing that takes the time is the decision making and subsequent restating of areas that need adjustment. There is a serious amount of paint on this canvas. Maybe the lesson lies in choosing subject matter more appropriate to the technique in the prevailing conditions, so for instance this subject might have better been rendered in watercolour or pen and wash. Never mind another day another lesson, but the knife felt a little more comfortable in this session. The next trip here will have to wait till there is a coincidence between domestic duties and the appearance of the sun, when hopefully the palette will shift towards a brighter range of colour.

Souter Cliffs - Photograph

Souter Cliffs - Oil on canvas board 12" x 10"

Confusion Reigns

Haven't been able to get out this week, that is until today. I'm posting this largely as a way of venting my frustration with the day's effort. Went up the coast to my usual stretch of cliff and set up. The cloud cover was already in and I decided on an approach that would push the colour and attempt to make the foreground jump with colour as a means of creating recession. You can probably guess that the lack of painting time this week has meant an excess of thinking time and that I've built up a little checklist of the things I intended to achieve on this, my next outing. I'm afraid that it turned out formulaic but not just one formula in play. The lack of light had me struggling to give appropriate form to the cliffs and I got hung up on introducing each and every colour that I convinced myself I could see, then decided to tone some of them down. Just goes to show that the thinking and planning is best done with the subject in front of you and being able to make choices in light of the prevailing conditions.

Desperate to get a positive out of proceedings, I lighted on the fact that I was able to produce a real range of colour from my limited palette of Indanthrone Blue, Naples Yellow, Venetian Red and Titanium White. I'll keep plugging with it for a while longer.

Souter Cove - Oil sketch on canvas board 12" x 10"

Disappointing Day

I set out yesterday morning to my favourite stretch of coast and decided upon painting a scene that I had tackled before. I was intent upon trying to improve on my last effort at this spot - result - disappointment as the finished piece does not have the same life or vibrancy of the previous attempt. Why? Well I think that my preparation was poor, in the sense that I did not do enough to prepare my palette of colours prior to starting the main painting process and as I worked I was trying to adjust and alter what was on the palette board with a lot of frustration. Hopefully lesson learned - a more disciplined preparation and a delay to the main painting until I'm happy that I have the correct colour range in sufficient quantities before me, that way I might develop better fluency and get enough paint onto the canvas. There's nothing worse than trying to eke out what you have to save mixing up more pigment.

Moral of this tale is telling in that it has made me think about what my next project will be. The next week will have me trying one or two demonstration pieces from books in my ever expanding library. There is a piece in a Kevin MacPherson book that might make a good starting point. If I manage to get it done I'll post it next week along with a note of the experience.

Souter - Oil on canvas board 12"x 10"

Back to the Brush

Yesterday I promised myself that I would get out the brushes again and decided that I'd head for my favourite stretch of coast near Souter lighthouse. The variety of rocks and cliffs along this part of the coast is challenging territory in more ways than one, not least because of the ever changing light. I try to make an early decision about light direction and shadow and incorporate that into my underpainting so that it informs the rest of the painting. This is more difficult than it sounds, particularly when the light flattens and contrasting values become difficult to see.

Another lesson learned today is that a fortnight without painting doesn't make it easy to start again and I took a little time to get into the process and didn't achieve either fluency or decent value placement. The best I can say is that I'm back smelling of linseed and troubling the canvas again.



Souter - Oil on canvas board 10"x8"