Long trip - little paint

There's a lot happened since my last post. Plenty of travel, lots of fun, interesting sights, great museums, lovely family occasions but little painting. Lets start by mentioning the annual trip to the opening of the Lake Artists Society Annual Exhibition. This takes place in late July each year and runs through to the start of September. It is held in the Village Hall, Grasmere and whilst it may not sound as the grandest of venues, the material on display is never less than interesting to visit and most of it is of a very high quality. There are a mixture of works in all sorts of different media. The Society maintains its standards by controlling the membership, who have to fulfill a residency criterion as well as being subject to election. If you are in the Lake District and fail to go and see the exhibition you will deny yourself a real treat.

Lake Artists Catalogue 2009

Home from the Lakes in time to pack a bag for two weeks away, London, Vienna and Slovakia.

We began with a few days in London, visiting family and crashing the galleries. First visit was to the National Portait Gallery to view the Annual BP Portrait Award Exhibition, always an interesting view. The selection of pictures below are drawn from the exhibition. The exhibition contains a wide variety of styles but each piece exhibited has a real impact, whether it be because of the stunning technique or the painterly impression. The whole of the exhibition is available to view on the NPG website. Changeling 2 was the first prize winner.

Changeling 2 - Peter Monkman, Oil on canvas 48" x 35"

Robert - Mark Clay, Oil on board 16" x 11"

Tom - Peter Holt, Oil on canvas 18" x 14"

Hats and Scarves - Tim Okamura, Oil on canvas 80" x 88"

John Anthony Portsmouth Football Club Westwood - Karl Rudziak, Oil on canvas 47" x 79"

My song - Jung-Im Song, Oil on canvas 24" x 18"

And so to Vienna and the amazing architechture, galleries, palaces and cafes of this wonderful city so dominated by the rule of the Hapsburgs. On this trip we were stopping off for a few days en route to Slovakia, so it was a case of cramming in as much we could. Three foot weary days later we had done a whistle stop tour of some of the attractions of this fascinating place. It would take too long to itemise all the highlights but I will leave you with two, Schloss Schonbrunn, summer palace of the Hapsburgs and one of the great masterpieces from the Kunsthistorisches collection. Leaving Vienna was done with a firm commitment to a prompt return.

Schloss Schonbrunn

Art of Painting - Vermeer

Last of all was our move across the border into Slovakia. This was in fact the main prompt for the trip in the first place. We had a family wedding to attend. Jane had become engaged to a Slovakian young man and for a variety of reasons they had decided to hold their wedding in his home village, Lesna. What a treat, hospitality, food and drink of the highest standard. People who were an absolute pleasure to be amongst and great fun and rejoicing as we acquainted ourselves with the customs and rituals around a Slovak wedding. I can thoroughly recommend the experience. All in all a great trip. We covered a lot of miles, saw a lot of sights and met a lot of wonderful people. My only regret was the fact that I only had one small opportunity, for about half an hour, when it was feasible for me to unearth the paint box. The small watercolour sketch below was the result. The plan, now that I'm home, is to start on those block exercises advocated by Susan Sarback and have my first experience of painting with nothing more than a knife.

Church Oravska Lesna - 12" x 10" Watercolour sketch on Not paper

November paintings

Brushes in hand and easel at the ready, along with a litany of advice, tips and things to think about I headed out into the wide world and produced my next oils en plein air. Again a mixture of aspects that I found pleasing and things that were little short of embarrassing. The first image is my first attempt at limiting my palette - raw sienna, burnt sienna, paynes grey and white and I almost succeeded in the self discipline until the very final stage when I cheated a little with a touch of cad yellow to warm some of the green. The limited palette approach is advocated in many of the books that I've been reading and certainly makes you think. I resolved to adopt a version of this approach in an attempt to develop my sensitivity to colours and their production on the canvas.




Little stream - Plein Air Oil Sketch, canvas board 12" x 10"


Another trip out along the coast to a well known landmark, the St. Mary's Island Lighthouse resulted in the next painting. As my friends in Wet Canvas tell me I don't pick easy subjects and there are distinct signs of my lack of mastery in all of these images, but there are also signs of heeding some of the lessons picked up along the way. Complex scenes like this, with conditions changing as the incoming tide alters the scene before you, make it difficult to be accurate in drawing and I will return to this site and select a viewpoint that will ease some of those problems and hopefully improve the perspective.


St. Mary's Island - Plein Air Oil Sketch, canvas board 12" x 10"


Even though splashing oil was becoming my disease, the watercolour kit usually accompanies me on trips out. A last visit of the year to the Lake District gave me the opportunity to produce a painting of one of our favourite watering holes.



The Swan at Grasmere - Watercolour 14" x 10"


Various other exercises filled my other painting hours and the painting below is taken from a photograph that I had taken on a holiday in the US during the previous year.



Yellowstone - Oil, canvas board 12" x 10"

All of the outings and exercises were building up experience and posting the paintings on Wet Canvas began to get me both encouragement and invaluable advice. I would put that advice to use in attempting a larger piece of work. It was also about time for me to spend some time in front of some real art and I began planning a number of visits to see the best that the country has to offer in the wonderful galleries that are scattered around. They will be the subject of my next post.