Flower power

Can’t believe I haven’t picked a brush in earnest since the end of March. I guess sometimes if you break a routine it can be difficult to get back into it. So this weekend I tried to make up for that. I set myself the task of doing flower studies from photos and from life.

Grass Meadow

I love the abstract nature of wild meadows. Nature itself has an amazing ability to create complex tapestries from randomly placed grasses and flowers, that when you look closely, really are very well designed and well balanced.

Nature has an amazing eye for flower arranging!

Still life in blue

My wife has had some flowers in a vase for a while and I think it is fair to say they are on their last stalks. They do however gain a different quality as they dry out and begin to wither. Their colours drain and become faint and opaque and there is an overall opaque quality that requires soft colour mixes.

The antithesis of this are her Orchids. We have numerous displays of these beautiful flowers in the house and I took the opportunity to study them straight after painting the dying arrangement above.

Orchids

These have a deep and powerful colouring and hang heavy on their stems. I used just 3 colours – purple madder, lemon yellow and colbalt blue.

Street in Collioure

A recent holiday to Carcassonne and surrounding area has given me a number of interesting references for watercolours. Most will be street scenes a bit like this one taken from a photo in Collioure.

Collioure street and old man

The light was amazing on this day and a real treat to paint.

Eilean Donan Castle

Love my new No.20 Round brush. It holds paint well and is a beautiful weight. Most of the sky and mountainside was painted with it. It is very versatile and as well as delivering great washes, it can cope with slighter detail too.

Eilean Donan Castle

Bye bye Blackbird

Had quite a time with this work. Sometimes it is a struggle when you bring different references to one picture. The sky, the blackbird and the hedgerow are all separate references and quite difficult to bring together to make a believable work.

This work was for a very lovely person who is mad about the Beatles. She first asked me to do a picture 18 months ago and to my shame, it was only on the cusp of her departure from the agency that I finally got on with it. Now it has a good home and that’s all that matters.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

South Fambridge by the Crouch Estuary

Early morning on the Crouch estuary, South Fambridge

Having not picked up a paint brush for a couple of weeks, I felt  I needed to produce a quick study from a photo I took while on a walk along the footpath beside the River Crouch at South Fambridge this week.

Ponte Vecchio sketches

Going to spend a few weeks working on a picture of Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Went there in 2003 and the atmosphere in Florence is surreal. The light creates a soft pastel-like effect and any photograph you take especially early in the morning just looks like a painting.

But that’s cheating.

Now I’m not very good at architectural drawing or painting. I prefer more organic subject matter and to be honest, perspective and structural recreation fill me with dread. I plan is to really understand the subject and then just represent it with the minimum of detail. As I said, the light will be the key to capturing the essence of Florence and then an eye for the simple detail should get me through.

So I have started with a quick pencil sketch to understand the light and shade areas followed by a watercolour sketch to get a feel for the coloration, tonal relationships and reflections in the water. Interestingly, the water and the reflections will probably be the focus as the water makes for the darker areas of the painting.

Vespa in Siena

Really enjoyed this study. The only tricky part is not drawing it but just putting down light washes and creating negative space for the vespa. Tuscan brickwork is child’s play to be honest. I just held pale neutral tones but tried to maintain some of that lovely Italian light.

A gentle build up of tones around the vespa with particular emphasis on the shadow areas to lift the bike out. A suggestion of detail on the handlebar and wheels worked for me and I think I managed to keep a simple impressionist feel to the whole painting.

Tollesbury Lightship

Okay, so I guess this turned out alright in the end. But the battle I had with it was a struggle. I messed the sky up with a schoolboy error of adding paint to a wet area that was too watery and the water spread removing some of the blue wash I had just put down (see top right).

I always have problems with my foregrounds. At one stage this was an even bigger mess than it ended up as. I had, in desperation, to use cling film, Maldon Sea Salt (ironic really) and a sponge to wrestle it back from oblivion. Pathetic too was the need to use white paint but it did help.

The ship was well behaved and worked really well and overall, I think it just about made it into the paintings I quite like.

A couple of quick landscapes

One of my biggest mistakes is overworking my paintings. By doing a few quick (10 minute max) watercolour sketches helps me realise that sometimes, simplicity is the key to success. A simple subject also helps and by producing some quick stokes to create a suggestion of a receded tide, frankly, couldn’t be easier.

Orchid Study

Don’t think my lovely wife missed one of the flowers of one of her many Orchid plants being taken by me to use as a study for this watercolour. And no, she doesn’t read my bloggings – at least, I hope not.

Me, myself, I.

We have heavy snow here today. For some reason, I fancy doing a watercolour self portrait instead of shovelling all the snow from the door. I nick the downstairs bathroom mirror and set to work. I have never painted myself before. It’s a strange feeling/experience just studying yourself, your features, your colouring and the bone structure.Very weird.

I spend an hour or so doing this and not actually mixing any paint or lifting a brush. This hour isn’t just spent looking at myself. I look at one of Jean Haines books – incredible watercolourist and try to feed on her inspiring work. I pick the raw colours I want and think about the size of paper.

Eventually I get down to it. I like listening to Tom Waits at the moment. I recently got into him after I saw him in The Seven Psychcopaths. Man’s a legend.

70 Acres Lake in the Lee Valley Park

So no watercolour classes on a Thursday evening. Instead, I’m deliberately sitting down to self-created projects/exercises for myself. I need to keep the discipline of regular painting while the class is halted.

Over-wetting the paper has once again reared its soggy head. I will conquer this somehow.

Bittern and Water Rail

Bittern

Water Rail

Just a couple of quick studies of the Bittern and a water rail that I see every time I visit Lee Valley Park.

Watercolour sketching at Rainham

Sooner or later I had to try sketching with watercolour without the comforts of a warm, well-lit room with comfortable chairs and a sturdy table.  Therefore, I traveled to Rainham and settled myself down beside the Thames on a freezing January afternoon. The sky was grey, the river was grey and lifeless but the place still had atmosphere. Cold grey afternoons in the winter are made for watercolours. The hint of yellow ochre mixed with a hint of ultramarine and a wash of Paynes grey achieved the perfect sky tones. The skyline with its industrial cranes and factories outlines the horizon and a rusty tone for dying reeds or riverside grasses mixed with raw and burnt umber created a slightly colourful contrast albeit a little basic.

My biggest issue was my hands. after 30 minutes, they could barley hold a brush and the slight wind lifting off the Thames caused my sketchbook pages to wave about, throwing well-place paint into unwelcome areas of the sketch. These are things I’m going to have to overcome or live with. But I do think I need to invest in a small fold away stool as opportunities to sit down somewhere dry were rare.

The Thames at Rainham, Jan 2013

Skyscapes under a cloud

The first class of 2013 focused on clouds. But darker clouds hung over the class. Our class only had three students and unless any others turned up, the evening class would be cancelled.

We practised cloud formation and with a heavy use of sponge and paper towels, we could manipulate the paint in quick studies from photographs.

As with any study, selecting your colour palette and pre-mixing the pigments is vital to working fast. My usual problem of over-wetting the paper continues to cause me problems and controlling the areas the paint travelled to proved to be a tense and somewhat frantic affair.

This was indeed the first and last class as the course was closed for the term. This will mean I will have to set my own exercises until such time as the class returns with better numbers.