Folds

Folds
Oil on canvas, 16 x 12"

I had a free sample pack of Winsor and Newton Artists oils. It had four little sachets of colour and a blending / shading medium. I decided to make a brush painting (partly so that I could make use of the medium, partly because the tiny amounts of paint in the sachets wouldn't last very long with a knife, and partly because I haven't used a brush with oils for around 15 years).

Full Length (Watership Down) - SOLD

Watership Down is rather long, and that is what I tried to demonstrate in this painting, made in the studio (mainly on Sunday, but I kept spotting problems and spent an hour or so sorting them out on Monday and on Tuesday10.

The local TV and radio mast (Hannington mast, on Cottington's Hill) can just be seen to the left of Watership Down, while to the right, Ladle Hill can be seen.

The painting was based on a series of photographs with an extra bit of borrowing from Watership Down and Ladle Hill and some imaginary grasses and flowers in the foreground.

And... here's an animated gif of the in-progress shots:

Full Length (Watership Down)
Oil on box canvas, 30 x 100 cm
SOLD

Winter Tree

I've had the photograph that this is based on for a few years but this is the first time that I have used it. It shows the valley floor beneath Cannon Heath and Watership Downs.

Oil on canvas, 70 x 50 cm.

Four-Pastel Sketches

It rained for most of today, but the evening was delightful. My generous husband suggested I get out on the hills for an hour or so after tea; how could I refuse?

Mural derivatives

The weather is - all of a sudden, it seems - warm and sunny and highly conducive to outdoor mural painting.

The Beeches - SOLD

With your back to Watership Down, you are looking down the line of The Beeches and the footpath to Ladle Hill (the footpath is part of the Wayfarer's Walk, a long distance path). You can see the sloping side of Ladle Hill through the trees to the right.

I took a few liberties with fences (largely removal thereof) and I also took a tree out to improve the view.

Oil on canvas 33 x 55cm
SOLD

EDIT (20 December 2013): High quality "giclée" prints will be available of this painting in the new year.

Trig Point on Watership Down (November)

We were up on Watership Down last weekend, and this is from a photograph that I took then. The cow parsley seed heads are quite difficult to render with a knife, but they do add interest to a bleak November scene.

Oil on canvas, 9 x 12"

School Mural Project: First wall done

I took new photographs today; it was overcast, which was better than against the light!

I think Watership Down is finished, now, and The Heart of the Village is coming on.

School Mural Project: We have paint!

The morning was (tolerably) dry, I wasn't at work, and the paint (System 3 acrylic) had arrived... so I made a start.

Watership Down and Ladle Hill in progress

A series of photographs taken of today's painting as it progressed. Photography occurred at tea breaks or other such random interruptions.

Watership Down and Ladle Hill

The weather was miserable today; it was definitely not a painting expedition day. And, because 40 inches isn't a painting expedition sized canvas, I decided that today was the day to do a big(gish) painting of an earlier sketch and photograph from October last year.

EDIT: Click here to see the "in-progress" post for this painting.

Oil on box canvas, 16 x 40"
For sale

Watership Down in the Snow: Framed

I chose a green frame for Watership Down in the Snow. Well, a grey-green. It's Farrow & Ball's Lichen, as supplied to me by Moonshine framing in Penzance. The idea was to pick out the green tint of the valley floor under its melting snow.

I've used this image as my Christmas card this year.

Happy Christmas!

Watership Down (5x7) in free sample paint

I managed to get my hands on a free samples set of Williamsburg oils, which are meant to be very good paints. There were three tubes, each 40ml, in Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, and Courbet Green. The latter - a rich, dark green that seems well suited to landscape - was new to me. The other two colours were familiar, but are not core elements of my usual palette.

I decided to try and paint a picture using just these colours.

Watership Down (4)

This painting is a commission. The lady who asked me to paint it liked a previous painting of Watership Down, and specifically requested grey sky and sheep.

Watership Down and Ladle Hill: Drawing Pencil

I really wish that Derwent had come up with a better name for these lovely pencils. They call them "Drawing Pencils", or, sometimes "Soft Drawing Pencils". Which could easily apply to a 4B graphite, say. (Aren't all pencils for drawing with? Even the H family - which I generally shun - are intended for drawing. Very precise drawing.)

I don't think that there is any graphite in these pencils. They are smooth and waxy and come in a range of muted, natural-seeming colours (the range is quite similar to the Sennelier "Nature" box). I now have the tin of 24 colours, which I think is all of them. I already had the earth-toned tin of 6, which I used for Study in Yellow. It's nice to be able to hint at blues and greens, and I think that the full range of colours suit this subject, which is from a photograph taken at around 5:30 pm earlier this month, when the sun was on its way down and the hillsides were in shadow.

Here's a slightly earlier, sketchier version in the earth colours:

Drawing on A4 paper

EDIT: There's a painting, too...

Cotton Bag: Watership Down (1)

The original oil painting, Watership Down (1), was quite a popular image, so it seemed like a good idea to try and render it on a bag. However, the subtleties of a predominantly green landscape may be pushing the limitations of my methodology. The wax version looked poorly defined, and so I tried using the coloured fabric pens. The resulting image is, possibly, a little lurid.

But maybe it still works, after a fashion. What do you think?

• Click here to find out more about my decorated Cotton Bags. 

Watership Down in the Snow - SOLD

This is another work from a photograph. It was a bit cold to sit and paint in the snow, so I took a camera out on my walk - to the same position that I painted Watership Down (1) from - and took a series of shots. I was slightly disappointed that we didn't get much snow this winter - unlike the last two years, which were, as it happens, exceptionally snowy. This, from February, was the snowiest picture that I could manage; as you can see the hill is satisfyingly covered, but you can see vegetation on the valley floor.

Watership Down with Sheep

It was very windy today, which made painting a bit difficult. I was also a bit short of time, because my car had to go in to the garage (I wasn't using it; I walked). I was glad that I only had a small board with me (is a board less likely to catch the wind than a canvas? I'm not sure). This painting took me about an hour and a half to complete; the image you can see is a photograph taken of the wet painting after its journey home and before any titivating (and prior to the addition of a signature).

The white dots on the side of the down are - like it says in the title - sheep. Very far away sheep.

This was a new vantage point, in a field near Nuthanger Farm. I wanted to get higher up than last time - which necessitated being further away - and to see the down full on, rather at an angle. I'm not, however, convinced that it's as attractive a view as the one painted from the valley floor. The lack of sunshine might make a huge difference, though...

Oil on board, 12 x 10"
The board is a commercially prepared canvas board.

Watership Down (1)

In an attempt to find a good vantage point for this famous hill, I struck out across the valley floor, on a footpath that followed a lowland gallop and that ultimately ventured up the down itself. But there wasn't time to walk up the hill and paint it, so I saved the climb until a later date (with worse weather - the Indian summer is still here, with temperatures higher, it seems, than the "real" summer) and settled down with a pair of small canvases and my usual painting kit. This was today's first painting. After I'd finished it, I turned around and painted Cottington's Hill from the same position.

Oil on canvas, 12 x 9".