Tuesday 31 October 2023
Lighting effects in Landscape Painting
Tuesday 5 September 2023
Creating textures on rocks
Monday 28 August 2023
Painting the Wye
Monday 14 August 2023
Blogging difficulties
Tuesday 4 April 2023
Painting with harmonious colours
One event in the year that I especially look forward to is the Patchings Art Festival, and I shall be demonstrating there once more on the fabulous Saunders Waterford and Bockingford papers, in the St Cuthberts Mill marquee on the mornings of 13th, 14th and 15th July. If you've never been, do treat yourself this year as it is a terrific show in lovely surroundings, and overflowing with artists demonstrating their various styles. There's no place quite like it for being supercharged with artistic inspiration!
This is just part of a small watercolour as I want to highlight more of the detail, and some of the techniques used I will be showing at Patchings. The moody background was created with the wet-into-wet method, with the whole of the background carried out with just burnt umber. Whilst the wash was still wet I suggested the trees with a rigger, the larger ones with a number 4 brush, and with hardly any water on the brush - almost pure paint so that it did not run. Naturally I test it on the side first to check if the timing is right.- To book tickets https://patchingsarts.tygit.
com/shop/groups/pk/ dc4104183eabdf2c336eaec6dae4fb a8 - Patchings page https://www.
patchingsartcentre.co.uk/ patchings-festival/ - Patchings Instagram https://www.instagram.com/
patchings_art/ - St Cuthberts Mill webpage: www.stcuthbertsmill.com
- St Cuthberts Mill Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/st_
cuthberts_mill/
Thursday 23 February 2023
Back in Erwood
There is something about the old stone bridges scattered about the mountain regions worldwide that feels such an idyllic subject for the landscape artist. The one I am featuring today stands on the River Artro in Snowdonia, a quiet, heavenly spot that has a calming influence on the mind. I have painted it a few times, and this view is looking upstream with light filtering through the trees.
The overwhelming greens in the top half of the composition have been tempered by the mixtures of French ultramarine and cadmium red in the lower segment, often with yellow ochre dropped in while the passage was wet. The contrasting effect of tall dark tree-trunks on the left, with the negative painting of the trunks of those saplings on the right helps to provide balance. The river naturally leads the eye up to the bridge, and I have kept the foreground water calm and lacking in detail in order to throw the emphasis on that which is closer to the bridge. The soft, blurred effect of the background trees also helps to accentuate the stronger lines of the bridge, and I have considerably reduced the number of trees in the scene.Monday 28 November 2022
Painting weathered stonework
I don't know about you, but I do love weathered stonework, whether it's a humble dry-stone wall snaking across a windy hillside, or part of a monumental masterpiece of some ancient temple. When I visited the vast Roman site of Baalbec in Lebanon's Hezbollah heartland the amount of outstanding weathered and sculptured stonework really took my breath away.
The illustration shows a small part of an enormous watercolour of the main courtyard at Baalbec. By keeping the edges fairly soft, this has imparted a weather-worn appearance. In the large side of the left-hand block of stone I began with a wash of alizarin crimson, dropped in some yellow ochre higher up and weak French ultramarine on the right. When the paper had dried I drew in the Roman lettering using a number one round sable, easing off the pressure in places to almost lose the outline of the letter, and in fact deliberately missed some parts. Again I allowed the work to dry before vigorously rubbing parts of some letters with a small flat brush to lose even more minor parts, before applying a wash of lunar black mainly over the right-hand side. This DanielSmith colour granulates with a vengeance, speckling the piece as in the original stonework. I applied it slightly unevenly and added the odd little blob here and there. I have created this in a traditional manner, building it up slowly overall, but there's no reason why you shouldn't include these techniques in combination with a more abstract design.