Cornwall in May - Vivien

Dawn across the bay, oil about 14 ins or so across

 Life has been getting in the way of me posting here so I thought I'd do a big post of images from a trip to Cornwall in May.   Most have been on my blog but you can see them together here.

What interests me is the changing light and colour as time, season and weather pass.    As the day moves on the colours change constantly, by the minute, the tide moves in or out, clouds change the colours, the sun moves from behind the silhouetted cliffs - ever changing.  It's great to revisit the same view in the way that Sarah has with the creek near her home and Jeanette does with the bays, Katherine does with the ecology park.  Some of these are of the same view, others are from different viewpoints or a few miles along the coast.

Sunset over the bay, coloured pencil

 Double page spread, across the beach, afternoon light, double page spread in the Canson watercolour sketchbook (pages are 12 ins wide), watercolour/mixed media

I use whatever medium either fits in with the time/family committments I have available or suits the subject.

We shared a house with my daughter, her husband, 3 year old grandson and 5 month old grandaughter - which inevitably affected painting time and materials.   I did manage to get out painting  alone though, leaving the family to their own devices :>)

The Crowns at Botallack, A3, charcoal and ink

 The Crowns again, inktense and coloured pencil

 The family wouldn't have tolerated sitting in the wind while I did the above charcoal sketch for instance - and my blood runs cold at keeping hyperactive grandson away from those sheer drops!

 Ink and wash sketch in the Canson watercolour book, The Crowns again

Porthgwarra, oil, approx 14 ins

 Porthgwarra is a little cove that is accessed via a cave - the tide was in and so there was no beach.   This was done sitting on the cliff top with a seal bobbing in the waves watching us.   Himself sat happily in the sun - it was windy but we were sheltered.   The programme 'Coast' explained yesterday how those waves are created by winds way out at sea, not so much local conditions.   Up to thousands of miles away.

The USA is somewhere off over the horizon :>)  - the first transatlantic telephone cables were laid from the nearby beach at Porthcurno (very very beautiful).

detail

Study of dawn colours across the bay, coloured pencil in moleskine sketchbook, A5

Study of afternoon colours across the bay from the house, coloured pencil in moleskine sketchbook, A5

Moorland Stream and ancient pack horse bridge, watercolour and mixed media on A3 sketchpad

Moorland stream in moleskine sketchbook, ink and coloured pencil. A5

There are more but this is probably enough!

Now I need to go and get the paints out and do some more work.

Cornwall, May 2011

The Crowns at Botallack, charcoal sketch, A3, Vivien

It's a while since I posted anything here - sorry.

This is a recent one, done on a very windy day, hair blowing in my eyes and fighting to keep the sketchpad still.   It's a mix of willow charcoal, compressed charcoal and charcoal pencil.

The sea was swirling around the rocks below,  gulls wheeled past, that cliff goes a long way upwards above the old engine houses that blend into the cliff.  The thought of miners walking down there in the teeth of a gale, the waves nearly reaching them, then going down dark narrow tunnels under the sea, lit only by the light of their candle, was in my mind as I worked.  A hard life, with a very short lifespan.   Charcoal seemed the right medium to express the place and its ambience.

You can see further sketches of the area here

puddles in evening field, sunset

Evening Fields and Puddles, detail, coloured pencil, Vivien Blackburn

Evening Fields and Puddles, sketchbook page in A4 moleskine, coloured pencil, Vivien Blackburn

Evening Fields and Puddles, detail, coloured pencil, Vivien Blackburn

Water may be a small element in this little sketch in an A4 moleskine, but it's very important to the composition and ambience of the cold, damp evening. The puddles add to the muddy coldness of the field, they weren't reflecting the warm colours, low in the sky but the colder white/grey of the clear sky overhead.

It was a subtle sunset, not a dramatic one and this was done at home with memories and photos - coloured pencil is simply too slow (for me) for building the glazes of colour intensely enough within the very very short timeframe of the special light. With oils it would have been possible to work entirely plein air fast enough.

As I said on my blog post today on using coloured pencils, I really like the way they behave on moleskine paper, allowing lots of layering of colour - like getting the warm glow of orangey light onto the grass of the field. Also the ease of drawing back into the image with an eraser. It isn't easy to scan or photograph the softer paler washes of colour though. The pale glow in the sky is a little smoother and has more soft pale colours that aren't picked up well here.

I've decided that this year I'll be juggling 3 main themes - Local Landscape (incorporating the Waterways Project, which is a slow burner), The Coast continuing and a new project on looking at Still Life in a different way for a project with a group of friends I meet up with once a month - we never do still life, so set ourselves a challenge to each find our own angle on it, to make it interesting to us and eventually have a joint exhibition of work done.

A big society I belong to are doing a project and exhibition on War and Peace to tie in with a large exhibition of major works planned of works in the museum's collection. I often take part in these projects but this year I'm feeling that juggling 3 themes is enough and I'm probably going to give it a miss unless some linking theme to my other work occurs to me (and time is short) - any brilliant thoughts on that would be welcome! It doesn't have to be taken absolutely literally but the ideas bounced off the theme.

Evening Light, Groby Pool, Leicestershire

I haven't been able to get out much to sketch because of the cold and its effect on my arthritis :>( and life getting in the way. Spring isn't too far away though :>)

But I have been out taking photos and plan to take a lot more. I especially love the light in the early morning and evening - it's so much more interesting, the skies are too.

These were taken at a local pool, a flooded ancient slate quarry. The sunset was subtle rather than dramatic but the light and soft colour was absolutely beautiful, with the skeletal winter trees silhouetted against the soft colour, the sheen on the water luminous.



So my new year resolution is to get on with a series of local landscapes - of course particularly those including water :>) - working from life and occasionally from photos like these.

On the other side of the water is an old 15C manor house with links to the Grey family of Jane Grey the 9 days Queen fame.

I bought a second hand pocket camera from a friend who was upgrading and I'm delighted with it (used for these). It means I can keep it almost permanently in my bag for all those times when the light/colour is special like this. (It's so annoying how often the most spectacular views happen when you are on a fast road with no hope of stopping!) I love my big camera but it can't be carried everywhere, all the time, this will fill that gap nicely and still has aperture priority/manual etc etc options and a 5x zoom for creativity :>)

I've also discovered a place I want to go back to for sketching with a high viewpoint over the canal in rolling countryside. The canal comes up a hill to the market town of Market Harborough via Foxton locks, with its long flight of locks enabling boats to come up a steepish hillside. The view I'd like to work from is further along, though at some point I should work here as well.

forthcoming exhibition in market harborough

I've been painting madly to produce some small works for an upcoming exhibition with a small group of friends.

We meet up once a month to discuss art, crit work in progress, go to shows, put on exhibitions several times a year and generally talk about anything art related - and lots more besides :>).



These are some images that are going to be printed as cards - it means people have something affordable if they can't buy a painting.




They are all computer manipulated so aren't reproductions of work but are based on work I've done and exist only in this form. More here.





I'm also responsible for the publicity, posters and fliers - if you can make it do come and see us.

< Click the poster for further details if you are in the area






And keep your fingers crossed for us on the first weekend of December :>)

Mission Trails, California

detail from larger work

Katherine and I are taking part in an exhibtion in California in November with friends - details later.

At the end of this post is a slide show of the work I've done - there are 5 paintings, with close up details following.

The work is based around Mission Trails Park in California. I needed to work around how I was going to tackle painting an area that is so different from the usual land and seascapes I paint here, in a very different climate. Needless to say it ended up involving water :>) Unusually for me, I was working on painting a place I don't know personally - a friend had provided photos and I used Google streetview, which was really useful for getting a feel for the area and did lots of research. Still, it was difficult. I usually work plein air and learn the feeling of a place as I sketch.

I started with the coloured pencil drawing of a still pool, reflecting the trees behind, the dry landscape very different from England - but the rocks and trees and reflections all interested me. I was trying to get to grips with the landscape there, the aridity, the rockiness, the mood.

As I thought about it, I realised that I wanted to abstract the images a little, play with texture, time, and shape and colour, experiment and include collage. All the works except for that first one are mixed media, using whatever was going to make the kind of mark I wanted. The joy of collage is the ability to move elements around to work out the composition before finally sticking down.

This is the final version that the above detail is taken from


It went through several incarnations on its way and further work with scissors as it became rather overcrowded and needed room to breathe :>) I would have liked to have given it even more room but had to work to a specific size - 11x14 inches so that it would fit the frames at its destination.

Each tree is a separate piece of paper, with watercolour, monoprinting and drawing to create the bark. The background is also collaged and then painted and drawn into.

Each was pure experiment with only a loose idea of the final result, responding to the marks, moving the trees and background pieces around until I felt they could be fixed.

There is watercolour in there, coloured pencils, ink, acrylic, gouache, biro (ballpen) and charcoal pencil - maybe other things that I've now forgotten!

The dark background helped with the fragmentation of the image, the changes in time/viewpoint and linked to the black of the charcoal and biro. It isn't of a specific place but plays with a mix of elements from many sources and imagination.

The colours play with warm and cool neutrals against the blue of the sky and reflections - the touches of warm apricot tones glowing against the blue (I hope!).

The 'some, a little and a lot' guideline applies - with most of the painting in neutrals, the blue and purple becomes more important.


If I'd had Sarah's instructions on varnishing watercolours in time I would have tried it out on this one - I think it would work best without glass.

you can see earlier versions here

Towards Dusk

This one again plays with the idea of time and fragmenting the image. Daylight moves into dusk.

What do you think?

work in progress, Vivien

Above and below: details from an experimental collage/mixed media development from tree sketches. Vivien

I'm experimenting with collage and mixed media to develop the recent images of trees (and of course water!)

The trees are done separately and stuck down with spray glue so that they don't become wet or stained with adhesive. I've played with marks - running paint wet-in-wet, splattering, drawing into wet paint with the wooden end of the brush, adding the occasonal bit of coloured pencil or watercolour pencil and keeping everything loose and abstracted.

There is a 'frame' around the central section, made up from trees at each side and tops of trees at the top - at the bottom the rocks create weight to balance these. The 'frame' is a deliberately disjointed, with elements that cross into it but a clear break elsewhere. (see link to whole image and further close ups below)

The pool with its reflections is worked loosely on yet another piece of paper that is collaged in.

Most of it is done in watercolour with different papers - white, cream and pale browns worked over in the various media. There is also coloured pencil, ink and a small touch of buff titanium acrylic in the final touches here and there.

(That's a colour I find really useful, particularly for doing the edges of canvasses - no mixing to match the colour for second coats)

click here to see the complete image in progress and further close ups.

Click on the above image for further work on trees

Feedback/crit/comments very welcome :>)

Winter pool

Winter Pools, detail, Vivien Blackburn

This is a small mixed media piece, 10 x 8 inches of a winter pool on a still blue skied day. Above and below are close ups.

It was done on Somerset paper, in a mix of watercolour, coloured pencil, gouache and ink. I like the variety of marks possible with mixed media - the transparencey and looseness of watercolour, the splattering with it; the hazing of coloured pencil over watercolour washes to create layers of colour that shine through each other, the calligraphic marks of pen - biro in this case - and the covering power of touches of gouache. The paper is quite creamy and I wanted some pure clear white in the reflection, so used the gouache to lighten it where necessary.



Back to work as I've got to produce another 4 in this series .....

Pendeen Lighthouse

Pendeen Lighthouse, mixed media

It's a while since I've been able to do much painting for a variety of reasons :>(

But .... here is one of Pendeen Lighhouse. It was one of those days when the sea and sky almost blur and the horizon isn't clear - all is soft pearly blues, turning viridian in the shallows. (the black at the bottom is simply the marker ribbon in the Canson watercolour book)

The cliffs a mass of wildflowers, the lighthouse buildings tumbling down the cliffside with the foghorns silhouetted against the sea.

and some more fish - though stylised

Digital play with the lino below

lino cut

digital experiment

I've been working with a couple of students doing linoprints and decided to have a play myself - it's not something I do very often as I prefer collagraphs as they are more painterly.

Before it gets messy I thought I'd scan the lino into the computer and then of course couldn't resist playing with the image in Photoshop. I think I can do more with this.

Over the weekend I hope to make time to have a go at printing it in oil paints. I'm not so interested in straight roll up prints but may do some later. I like the potential of colour changes with using oils and the brush marks and textures that happen.

It might work to have a shoal of them, or a line of 3 or 5 - lots of room for experimenting.

Sam's book is progressing well but recent illustrations haven't been water so I haven't shown them here. I thought it was high time that I appeared with some water related work :>)

Photos of Cornwall, May 2010 - The Cot Valley and Porth Nanven

Just back from Cornwall - it has been hectic with work hours being long and then going down to Cornwall with the whole family.

I didn't get enough sketching done with family around but took loads of photos.

The one above is the stream running down the Cot valley, past the farmhouse where we stayed. and below are the little Cot arriving at the sea at Porth Nanven and joining the sea. (I painted her last year on a sunnier day)

view from the moor, moorland farms

and the view from up on the moors in the centre of Cornwall - in places you can see both coasts - Penance and St Michael's Mount to the south and Cape Cornwall to the north.



aerial map of the Cot Valley - though it flattens all the very steep hills :>(

online sketching and using photoshop

Sketches/doodles done online here Vivien Blackburn

Julie posting a link to this fabulous time-eating site - sketching with the tools is so fluid and the marks it makes delicious! Click to see it larger and you'll see what I mean. I did this quick sketch from memories of walking through the dunes and down to the sand on the Norfolk coast. (I must get over there with Spring on its way) I used the shading, chrome, ribbon and long fur tools in this.

then combined with colour on my computer .....

making it more wintry

I could play for hours! I'd love this as a proper programme, actually on my computer, that would produce large scale drawings.


It's really worth clicking on them to see the lovely marks it makes properly. And play have a go ..........


oh dear .... Julie this is addictive