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.