Something REALLY different.

 For me that is.  I paint landscapes - I have never ever painted a seascape.  But .. at the beginning of the week I walked into a room that was suffused with an amazing pink light from outside.  My phone runs on steam power and, although it was totally inappropriate for the situation, I went around looking for a 'smart' phone to take some pictures. Thank you to Penny Meaden for lending me hers and for emailing the images to me so quickly.

I started with a board coated in gesso and covered it with a thin layer of rose madder - much of the base layer can still be seen in the finished painting. I then began to work up the shapes I needed for the beach and the horizon.  For the last several months I have been working on a much smaller scale and I had forgotten how much hard work it is to cover a 4 foot wide  board!

As you can see, first go around I painted the shape I know so well - the field at home.  It just proves how necessary it is to keep drawing and drawing and drawing, the body learns the rhythms of shapes and produces them automatically.

 I decided to work with the shapes I had and continued adding colour to catch the light and serenity.

To finish I altered the shapes slightly and added the breakers. I'm quite pleased with end result, I may even paint a few more seascapes.

"Goodbye Old Friend" oil on gesso board 48" x 24"

Dear Diary - I keep writing to you but unfortunately you can't read my mind and automatically put the thoughts on the screen.  It seems that I actually have to sit down and type this.....

Thanksgiving to New Year is my most hated time of the year - now that has stretched into January. I keep looking up from my work table expecting to see Monika charging up the drive and off loading heaps of plants that will find good homes in my garden. Funeral tomorrow - a chance to say goodbye - I always thought she would be attending my funeral.

So - onwards and upwards.  Even though I don't like this time of year I have continued to work (paint, draw, photograph) and probably forced myself to do more than usual to keep the lids on all those mental boxes.




My easel has probably reached its final incarnation.  It is a wonderful big studio easel on wheels - can take up to 6' canvases and is really solid.  Because of our ceiling height the lower support cannot be pushed up to bring a small painting to eye level so I have attached a beam using two clamps.  Lighting is always a problem. When working close to one tends to get between the light and the work - I have tried specialised lamps that clamp to the easel but you need at least 2 and they always seem to get in the way. Two desk lamps, 2 clamps and an offcut of wood - et voila..

(L)A small oil painting (12' x 12") I finished in early December and had forgotten about!

(R)And a watercolour of the same subject done early January 2016

For the last 10 days or so have been working on something for the Snowdrops exhibition at Shaftesbury Arts Centre - mid February. I don't usually work to order  but decided it would be good discipline to do so.  Started playing on Procreate and eventually developed 2 small (9"x 9") oil paintings. Not sure if they are finished - will live with them for a day or two to see.

This last photo has the 2 oils and a photo of hoar frost tipped ferns I was using for the background on the left one.














I suddenly realised that I have mentioned about a quarter of what I have produced since the beginning of December but this post is quite long enough.
So Dear Diary you will just have to wait for the next instalment.

Keeping up.....

I'm only into my third post on this and already have fallen behind my self imposed schedule of posting every two weeks  - oh well never mind.

Spent a lovely hour and a half with Amo on our ArtFlab this morning. (It's a kind of show and tell for adults).  As our disciplines are very different its great to see the reaction to what has been produced and we both benefit (I think) from having someone unrelated looking at our stuff.

Over the last couple of weeks (even though we have Christmas and New Year) have been working with the pastels, a couple of graphite drawings, tried to squeeze in some oil painting - (not happy with either of my starts because the colour changed so much when it dried overnight).
Quite pleased with these 2 pastels. Learned a lot about mark making.

A trio of less successful watercolours - although there may be some salvageable bits if I take a knife to them.

And the biggy - learning how to use ProCreate on my new ipad Pro. Now I have to figure out how to get those drawings either into iphoto or onto the printer. It has been fun experimenting with layered drawings, its nice not having to commit to destroying an image by working over it and then realising it was wrong. The layers take away that apprehension and allow work to be created much more quickly.  Today I have managed to take a photo, draw over it and then delete the photo (a cheat but helps get proportions right when it counts).


Something Amo pointed out is that with pastel it is possible to remove/erase part of the image - I had forgotten - but this allowed me to work into the foreground of this picture and create more depth.

Looking forward I have finally managed to complete one piece for L"Artische exhibition 100mm x 100mm. I know I paint with small brushes but then making my idea into a small painting was incredibly difficult. I have one other that I think will work and should be able to execute that over the next few days,