Purbeck Eddies

Purbeck Eddies, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm

I started this in the last few days of Open Studios, working from a 2014 photograph taken off the beach at Winspit in the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset. I finished it today, having taken a few days off.

Recorders and Lute: Palisander and Toby Carr (triptych)

Recorders and Lute (triptych), before framing

These three pieces were painted using inkjet printer inks (without the inkjet printer).

It's not over until...

Open Studios West Berkshire and Nort Hampshire has technically finished, but there are a few satellite exhibitions lingering here and there and, of course, there are several studios that are full time affairs and which will often open by appointment.

So yes, you can still visit me. Just get in touch...
[Contact page]   [Open Studios Directory entry, includes full contact details]

The outstanding exhibitions that I know about (because I'm involved in them) are:

Art in Music at the Corn Exchange in Newbury - on until 24 May, during performances only;

Cover to Cover (exchange sketchbooks) at the West Berkshire Museum in Newbury - on until 30 May;

North Hampshire Art at the Willis Museum in Basingstoke - on until 3 June. 

The road to Kimmeridge: some in-progress shots

Sometimes I think I might forget how I did something (and the best somethings are often the result of a happy accident) or, more often, I worry that the next bold stroke of the knife will wipe out the best bit of a painting.  So I've got into the habit of taking quick photographs of the current work-in-progress in the studio when my hands are clean enough to operate a camera (in the field is different; there's more time pressure and, usually, fewer distractions).

This post contains a sequence of such photographs, with notes, for the painting of Kimmeridge, which was painted on a clear-gessoed linen canvas with the six tube version of my standard palette: burnt umber, ultramarine, phthalo blue, lemon yellow, rose madder quiacridone. Most of the knife work was done with a Winsor and Newton no.27, with a smaller knife (Langnickel LP-1) used later on. I also used a silicone colour shaper for a few details and my signature.

I'm working from a photograph that I took in 2014. I hadn't seen the possibilities of the shot until now (except maybe in the instant that I took it). I remember the day. It was hot, very hot for England, the heat of the sun bouncing off the rocks. My husband and children were in and out of the sea but I felt unable, uncertain of my physicality, uncomfortable in the heat and unsure of my balance - and besides, I wanted to sketch. I made a very bad, overworked and tiny watercolour of the distant Clavell Tower. And I took lots of photographs.

This was one of them.

You don't get to see my source photographs very often.

Nearly three years later, I picked it out for the studio treatment. There was a lot of fiddly detail that would challenge the knife; of course, it wouldn't all go in, but if there was any chance of making the Clavell Tower recognisable in any way, I had to use a fairly large canvas. And I was trying not to think about the seaweed, but its colours anchored the image and justified the long format, so I would need to make them work... somehow.

Starting with the darkest areas, pure "dark": burnt umber and ultramaine - marking out the composition. This isn't all of the dark bits, but the position of the horizon and of the central band of rocks seemed, to me, to be important. I placed the top of the rocks quite deliberately at that "magic" 1/3 point that all the theory says is important (or is that "all the theory that I can remember"?) This image didn't need much sky. It was about the sea. And the rocks. Especially the rocks (and the way the sea shaped them).

Well, that's all of my initial darks added, with some colour on top (mainly blue). The lower right is where I imagine I'll be signing it and I try to remember to put a nice contrasty dark there in most paintings. But this isn't most paintings and I completely overlooked the fact that the foreground is all complex seaweed and shadow - too detailed for a swirly AJB right there. But it is quite shadowy in that corner, so that's fine. Hang on a minute - I also forgot to put the sky in!

Oh, thank goodness for that. There's the sky. And some pink bits.

Pink is a surprisingly important colour, Of course, it needs to be a good, strong pink, a blue-red colour - that can be used to tone down the most excessive of your greens, to make lively greys (see the sky), to create purples and oranges and reds. By this stage, I've employed the full paletted and I'm moving around the picture according to where the next bit of the colour on my knife should be. That colour changes as it picks up paint already on the canvas and I'm constantly reassessing, occasionally wiping the blade or, less often, scraping "wrong" paint off the canvas. The rocks are mostly blocked in, aong with the bluest bits of the sea (it's only now that I realise quite how much I have heightened the colour) and I've had a go at some of the seaweed.

That's most of the canvas covered. I'm leaving bits of the natural linen on purpose. What's the point of a clear gesso if you don't? The rocks are starting to look solid. That red stuff on the closest rock shelf is glorious. I exagerrate it. The seaweed is still a bit ... vague.

I'm ignoring the seaweed. I'm having fun with the rocks. Edge of the knife, incising, finding the hidden dark, or, if that is lost, adding more dark, freshly made on the palette, as it slices through the softly yielding paint already on the canvas. I lose myself in the abstracted detail of the rocks.

The rocks are working; not quite complete, but I know what's happening there. I've softened the dark shadows on the edges as they curve away from the shadows I've established the main colours, the majority of the cracks and lines. Let's have a go at that seaweed... More shadow. Greenish bits. It's blotchy and crude and it looks alien to the rest of the image.

I distract myself with the fiddly details of the tower. It's a distinctive shape, and the appropriate proprtions elude me for a while. The back down to the seaweed... Suddenly, I realise that it's too green. It's a bit green, but there is far more yellow and red - even some white to lighten beyond the powers of the lemon yellow. And the shadows are less blue than I had them originally. The foreground paint layers up, gets scraped back here and there... How do I make it look wet and under-watery? Reflections, ripples, white, nearly white, a few dark, incised with the silicon colour shaper, with the knife (a finer, subtler line, harder to curve). And finally, carefully, dragging a near-white mix gently down over the surface, barely shifting it, distorting a little, smoothing its paleness into the colours already there... Done. Signed. Complete.

Kimmeridge

Kimmeridge Bay in Purbeck, Dorset is all about the rocks. It lies on the Jurrassic Coast and is a favoured destination for fossil-hunters as well as rock-pool afficianados and snorkellers. It has clear, calm water and a folly on the headland - Clavell Tower, which in 2006-8 was moved away from the crumbling cliff. 

So, of course, my painting is all about the rocks. The flat rocks in the centre dominate the image. I spent most of my time on their colours, curves and cracks, their attendant pools and the wet reflections of the summer sun, but it was the seaweed that worried me most. It was a curious colour - a bright mix of yellow, green, red and orange - and it was underwater, right in the foreground. How could I indicate that with my knife, a blunt painting instrument if ever there was one? In the end, it was all a matter of observation and approximation, as is often the case, and allowing the viewer's visual cortex to fill in the gaps.

Kimmeridge 

Oil on linen canvas, 50 x 70 cm

£400

Arctic Corsair - painting from a sketch and believing in the sketch

The best thing about painting from a sketch is that you've already made most of the decisions about what to leave out.

The worst thing about painting from a sketch is that you've already made most of the decisions about what to leave out.

When I made these two sketches, I wasn't really thinking about whether or not I would use them for a painting, I was just enjoying sketching. Which is what I usually do. Still, with detail in the line drawing, focussing on the boat, and colour in the drawing of the buildings alongside it, I thought I would be able to do a passable job of recreating the scene.

The following is a description of how I painted this. I used a painting knife with oils on a clear-gesssoed linen canvas.

Arctic Corsair

The Arctic Corsair is the last of Kingston-Upon-Hull's side-winder trawlers, efectively the last remnant of the city's fishing fleet. She currently lies on the mud in the river Hull by the museum quarter and is a museum ship herself. She has been there since 1999 (after the time I lived in Hull) but there is talk of moving her to a dry dock in the near future.

The painting is based on a couple of sketches that I made in January 2016. There is a little artistic licence in a few places - the riverfront warehouse on the right, for example, is a complete fabrication! The jagged red brick edifice in the background, in front of the cream-coloured Shotwell building, on the other hand, was there and was in approximately that shape when I drew the Corsair and her surroundings. It was partially demolished and looked rather like a post-industrial castle.

Arctic Corsair

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm

£200

The Woolhampton Green People

 

Green Man; Green Lady
Acrylic ink on A3 Bockingford rough watercolor paper

Nearly 18 months ago, I posted some pencil sketches made of two carved faces from a local church, St Peter's in Upper Woolhampton. These pictures are based on those sketches.  The faces are Victorian (the church was rebuilt in 1857) and, with their surroundings of leaves, the gentleman's leafy moustache and the vegetation emerging from the lady's mouth, are in the green man tradition. I fancy that they might represent the local landowner and his wife.

Restoration Project

Every now and then I decide to alter my palette as a one-off, to use colours I don't use often. It kind of shakes things up a bit as well as usefully delpeting those odd colours that I'm never really going to use often... or maybe make me reconsider the usefulness of some of those colours.

I chose this subject - found in a barn while walking near Chievely in Berkshire - because of its strong shapes. My collection of odd colours inludes a couple of vibrant oranges and orangey earth tones; here, I used Chrome Orange (hue), Pyrrole Orange and Indian Red. I thought they would work well for the different shades of rust. Continuing the odd colours theme, I picked out Phthalo Blue (red shade - I normally use the green shade) and Yellow Green. White is difficult to do without, so I included it, and there was some Rose Madder Quinacridone left on my palette, too, so that ended up in the picture as well.

Restoration Project

Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm

£120

Entrance (Chysauster)

I find prehistoric sites entrancing: open to the elements, often in (relatively) remote locations, they are refreshing in their wild freedom yet retain a palpable sense of history. I also rather like painting stones.

This is the entranceway to one of Chysauster's "courtyard" huts. Chysauster, in west Cornwall, is a remarkably well preserved iron age village managed by English Heritage.


My painting was made last week while my studio was open as part of Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire. There's still just over a week of Open Studios left; you'll find my dates and details here.

Entrance (Chysauster)

Oil on canvas, 55 x 46 cm

£190

Bluebell Stump (Wolverton Blue 2) - SOLD

Wednesday's short painting session in Wolverton Wood gave me enough material (on the canvas and in my head) to refine the image in the studio yesterday.

Bluebell Stump (Wolverton Blue 2)

Oil on natural linen canvas, 30 x 40 cm

£120 SOLD

Bluebelling

... in progress ...

... and mostly finished.

It was a beautiful day for seeking out and painting bluebells. I took a couple of hours out and visited Wolverton Woods. I will probably do a litte bit more to it tomorrow during my Open Studio...

Next blog post:
finished and titled

Step Over (Chysauster)

Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm (03/05/17)

This is the first painting started and completed in my new studio. It was painted while the studio was "open" for Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire.

It's painted from my photograph of the steps over a Cornish Hedge on the approach to Chysauster, an iron age village in Cornwall.