Plein air by the Loire...January

I wish you all a wonderful year with all the low points of last year turned into highlights this year!

Happy 2011

I wanted to start this new year off with a plein air painting, no matter what the weather circumstances were. And I did. I took off this morning with my painting stuff and a new pochade I haven't used before, to the Loire. The temperature read 2 degrees C. I only had running shoes to wear, because my daughter has my hiking boots in the mountains.

It was very difficult...it took me ages to set up my things, I kept on slipping in the mud, my fingers were numb before I even started painting and I struggled to open the caps and squeeze out the oils. I found the little pochade extremely uncomfortable and clumsy and missed my French easel all the time. I couldn't open the Liquin bottle and had to run back home to fetch another. I found it comlicated to paint with the muffins and the scarf was choking me and I felt thick and uncomfortable with my sleeves in the way of the paint, constantly knocking over the mediums. I chose a difficult scene and had an uncomfortable spot in the mud and slighty up a hill. My eyes and nose were constant watery from the cold and I had to fiddle with tissues all the time, resulting in me arriving home with a face looking like my painting. After 2 hours I couldn't stand on my numb feet any more and I started doing nonsense on the canvas, getting so frustrated that I slung my brush way into the distance, in the mud! And then I decided that I should pack it in.

BUT!! I completed the study. Although I don't like the painting/study, and although it was an enormous struggle, I am very satisfied that I did it. It is one of my plans for the new year - to get out and paint even if the circumstances are challenging - and I WANTED to start today, on January 1st. Now I only need to get out there often to get used to these difficult winter plein air painting. In the end it is really gratifying and I now know I can do it. I can probably save this study in my atelier if I want to but it serves no purpose. I didn't get out there today to produce a masterpiece, although I would've liked it to be a bit better than it turned out...

..winter loire corner study 1..

..oil on linen, 34x23cm..

Also posted on Africantapestry...

Until next time... paint away!

Painting With a Story in Mind

This is the collection of paintings that have now headed off ready for the Summer 2010 exhibition at Beside The Wave.  With this set of paintings I have tried to let them tell a story.  It is not complicated, it is the walk down to the sea.  It is a walk that I do often, through every season and every kind of weather but here it is early summer.  To me, a walk to the sea, through rich deep green lanes and paths, past billows of wild flowers and beneath towering beech trees, is an essence of Cornwall and hopefully it will say similar things to other people, wanting to buy a little bit of that to hang up at home.
Putting the collection together as I have done here is a very useful excercise.  It lets me see what my painting habits are, what colours I rely on, what strengths and weaknesses are in my painting style, where I need to concentrate more, where I need to loosen up.  It also lets me enjoy my own work, after all this might be the last time I see these paintings, I am always sad to see them go but also very happy that they have sold.  There is nothing quite like the buzz of selling your work, (someone else likes it enough to want to live with it!)  I suppose it is a bit like children, you bring them up as well as you can, hoping that they will be lovely rounded people who want to leave home and who are nice enough to find someone else to share their lives with and be happy... but you still miss them, and you miss their littleness.  So it is with a painting, that excitement when you start, the descisions that you make that make it work, that make it stand on its own as a thing, an entity, a little window into a slightly more magical world.  Gosh!  What responsibility!
Anyway, if you dont do it already, try it, put a little collection together and see what it tells you about yourself as an artist.  It is interesting!

New Year Project - thinking around ideas

Runswick Bay, Yorkshire, pen. Vivien Blackburn

A big local art group I belong to has an annual project which can be interesting to take part in. The work is then exhibited at the local museum - the topic is usually linked to work in their collection, though one year it was linked to the comedy festival.

We've been given about a dozen paintings and sculptures on show in the museum, by a range of artists from a range of eras, to look at to spark off ideas. Work needs to come from these, not simply be a reworking or copy. The 2 that interest me are a cottage by John Piper and a maquette by Moore. I need to go in and do some sketching from them and some research.

I've liked Piper's work for years, with their interesting marks and textures, so that appeals the most. I also like the sensuous curves of Henry Moore's sculpture - which I may/may not combine with marks and textures reminiscent of Piper. It's on a first-day-of-thinking-about-it stage of development just now. I'll check back in from time to time with progress.

The drawing above is one I considered developing in collage, charcoal, ink and paint.

I thought I'd work from some my old sketches -the information I need is there, they were done plein air but they languish in sketchbooks and need developing.

Links to just some of the work I might develop for this project - I'm undecided at the moment - any thoughts? I only need 3 paintings maximum.

The Crowns, Botallack - I wasn't happy with this and would like to do something more interesting

Sketch of the Crowns

The canal in the city

Canal boats at the marina

Charlestown harbour

Brancaster Staithe

..... back to sketchbooks and thinking .....

17th January - update here - I'll show the finished painting here as a separate post when it's done.

Shadow and light.

An oil painting of a shady corner of the Loire on a sunny day.

I love oil work, but have always found it such an effort to do plein air with; the carrying around of the oils and the wet painting afterwards, the cloths(of which I use a lot), the containers, and the cleaning stuff for the brushes, the easel...it isn't a medium I can just hop onto my bicycle with. But in the end it is actually worth it. With only one stroke you can catch the fleeting light and it stays, whereas with watercolour I'm always panicking that I don't have enough pigment to really catch the contrast in colour quick enough. And the oils give me an immense satisfaction - seeing a stroke that just works with the first lay down...or maybe I just feel more confident with oil. I'm inspired again by painters like Michel Jouenne and Stéphane Ruais (peintres officiels de la Marine en 1991)

We are going to Coin Perdu in Correze for the next three weeks. It is a sort of solitude break I'm taking. I am packing ALL my oil stuff and my goal is to do as much plein air as the days allow. There are nooks and corners and pathways by the streams, in the forest, the fields and hills. There are fountains and springs, wild flowers and animals galore, so no reason not to come back with a gallery full of paintings. I'm also going to try my hand at gouache, a medium I still feel very stupid with. Pens and inks and of course the old trusted graphite to oil the drawing skills.

If the electricity and internet are kind to us, I may be able to post some work from there, but if not: see you in three weeks with hopefully a lot to show and tell.

...ombre et lumiére...

oil on linen, 36x36cm

Water on "earth day" - a clear brook

With today being earth day, how can we not contribute a special post to water on this day, seeing that it plays such an important role in the survival of our world.

My contribution is two paintings in watercolour of the ruisseau(brook) at our mountain house, Coin Perdu, in Correze. We are restoring it as natural as possible with natural building materials using the stone, wood, mud and clay from the area, solar heating, an ecological[partly self maintaining swimming pool(much later!) and of course a self maintaining garden with its wild herbs and insects and animals along with a bio vinyeard. So I felt it fitting to show the brook that runs down at the foot of our hill.

And today I'll plant some colour in my window boxes and revel in my frog by the fountain, the swallows who are back to nest in our cave, the owl who keeps me awake at night, the pair of red Robins who bounce around on the side of the cliff and I'll take a long stroll along the river - the sun a delightful gift in the sky!

...ruisseau en printemps.. (brook in spring)

Pen and watercolour on Fabriano artistico, 30x23cm.

...ruisseau en automne... (..in autumn)

Watercolour on Fabriano artistico, 30x23cm.

**Be sure to see the Water on "earth day" - posts of the rest of the Watermarks-group today.

Birds of La Loire

We were bathed in sunlight this past week, which made Sunday a perfect day to pack my bike and sketch the birds of the Loire. Here is a photo of the protected islands in La Loire((Montlouis) where the birds come to nest in spring.

...a close up of the activities...

Two sketches; done from the riverbank, with the road passing right behind my back. I even had cars honking at me, not that I was anywhere near blocking them, so I can just assume it was encouragement!! I wasn't exactly sure how to capture all those birds. These sketches actually do look a little better in my sketchbook than here on the screen.

...les mouettes...

Sketches done in rotring pen and watercolour in sketchbook, 24x19cm.

Then I just captured two pages of some of the birds in flight. Most of the birds on this island are La Mouette melanocéphale. They are white all over, like the normal mouette, but have a black head and red beak, as you can see on the first page of sketches. They are rare in France, but are found on this island here on the banks of Montlouis, where they share space with La Mouette rieuse, the normal loud mouths.

...fly away...

Sketches done with rotring pen, sizes 0.2 and0.7 in Fabriano sketchbook, 20x14cm.

The biggest surprise of the day, was having Hartman show up on his bicycle a while later with a backpack, stuffed with picnic goodies. We parked ourselves next to the Loire on a green patch of grass and shared in a bottle of Loupiac and baguette with cheese. I made a rapid sketch of le pique-nique,...and the effect of the Loupiac can clearly be seen in the sketch!

...surprise!..

sketch with pen and watercolour in sketchbook, 24x19cm

My trusted bicycle, that takes me everywhere. Unfortunately, it doesn't have enough gears, so you'll always find me pushing and puffing on the uphills.

...push and pedal...

Back home I did some oil work from two photographs. These were done one after the other on Sunday afternoon along with a coffee one after the other.. In the second one I used some palette knives along with a broad flat brush.

...birds of the Loire 1...
Oil on canvas block, 20x50cm.

...birds of the Loire 2...
Oil on canvas block, 30x50cm.

It is days like this that I love being an artist. Being completely absorbed in what you're doing. Maybe not producing an "oohh, aahh!" painting, but being totally present in the moment of painting. So much so that you can feel yourself growing, changing and adapting to the demands of the moment.

Not any of these paintings/sketches I did today, is really notable as beautiful artwork and won't see the inside of a gallery. I see many areas which I could've taken on differently, areas where I could've been more patient, where I could've used more bolder daring colour, areas where I could've been more risky as well as areas I could've been less bold, but when I look back on them, I see my process, and that gives me a huge kick. I am already reflecting on how to take the process on in my next painting, using this past process as reference. We all know that to be an artist, is to have 99 percent of experiments and "failures" and 1 percent of finished presentable artwork! It is in the process that we artists find our happiness, no?

Seeing spots

Trout in progress watercolour, pen & ink

Crop showing pointillism

Progress, watercolour and start of pen and ink overlay

When you have a fish with dark pigment on it what else could you call it but Spot? When you add pen and ink in pointillism it reinforces the name.

I have been submerged in fish lately from prints to paintings as well as other elements of life that have taken over a bit including a shoulder problem that's made painting a bit challenging this week.

This particular piece started out as a study for planned piece. I want to experiment with some watercolour pours and add either fish prints or paintings to the full sheet. So I was seeing how a painting of a fish would look and it seemed to take on a life of its own.

Trout are fairly covered with minute black spots and larger areas of darker pigmentation. I started out in watercolour but it didn't give me the detail that I wanted. I pulled out a .25 Rapidograph pen and started adding tiny dots to create shading and the pigmentation. This method of working is very time consuming but I greatly enjoy it and it becomes almost soothing to sit there dotting away for ages.

I also laid my hands on a few bottles of irridescent acrylic ink and added tiny touches of this to the watercolour wash. I don't want the piece to be completely shiny and artificial looking, just make the viewer wonder if its their eye or is it really a little irridescent.

This is a piece in progress as I haven't completed the ink or the watercolour layers yet and will continue to slowly build them.

A friend's pond full of expensive koi carp was hit by deep ice and cold and a number of the fish died and were presented to me half frozen in a bag one evening last week. I haven't had a chance to do much with them this week, but they look promising as the scale pattern is so pronounced on the carp. I took one print but the fish wasn't thawed enough so the ice melted a little even after drying the skin and interfered with the ability to get a clear print.

I've continued to work on the original fish prints that I made with a rainbow trout and am creating both cards and paintings with them.


They seem to bring out a looser side of me and using brighter colours and abstract shapes is very freeing, even if going back to detail always appeals to me.

Its another part of Watermarks that I am grateful for - the push to experimentation and exploration. Thank you!

The waterways project so far

The waterways project so far ........

As the weather gets warmer (my arthritis doesn't like this cold :>( ) I want to get a lot more work done on this project. It was always intended to be a slow burn project but it's a little too slow burn at the moment!

The beautiful huge willows that overhang the water in the charcoal sketch of the 15C packhorse bridge are now the sad pollarded stumps of the lino prints and pastel. Though interesting to draw, the landscape is poorer for their loss. I know they will grow again but it will be a long time before they regain their beauty.

So far I've only looked at Aylestone Meadows, the canal marina at Market Harborough and countryside nearby and the city centre with its old factories and weirs.

I've looked at aerial views thanks to mapslive.com and I'm interested in taking them further at some stage. They show you the context - how the bridges and rivers, canals and streams relate to each other.

In the Charnwood Forest area are old slate quarries, now flooded and surrounded by trees that I want to look at soon. Rocks and depth and craginess - something quite different from the tranquil canal.

update: link to oldest fossil found in that area in really ancient rock

So many things I want to do - I just need the time.

The Studio Boat #2 - "Monet Painting on His Studio Boat"

Monet Painting on His Studio Boat (1874) by Edouard Manet

Oil on canvas, 82.7 x 105.0 cm
1913/14 Tschudi contribution Inv.-Nr. 8759 Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

Manet painted Claude Monet painting in his studio boat with Monet's wife Camille in the background in 1874.

According to John House (Monet: Nature into Art) this painting by Manet has been seen by some as a tribute to "Avallant(Le dejeuner dans le bateau) (Down the Hatch-Dinner on Board), from the album Voyage en bateau (Boat Trip), an 1861 etching" by Charles-François Daubigny. This appears to refer to the position and angle of the studio boat rather than the activities of its occupants. Others think it more likely that it relates to Daubigny's 1866 etching Le botin Conflans (Le paysagiste en bateau); (The landscape painter in a boat).

I'm left wondering where Manet was.....

The Studio Boat #1 - Monet's bateau atelier

Le bateau-atelier (1874) by Claude Monet (1840 - 1926)
19-5/8 x 25-1/4 inches, oil on canvas

Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

The studio boat has an honourable history. It's been responsible for an awful lot of art which now commands very high values.

Claude Monet is renowned for painting plein air. He even took his studio outdoors and on to the water for some of his paintings. In 1873 Monet had a 'fruitful sale' which enabled him to have a studio boat built. He may well have decided to get one after an association with Daubigny (a member of the Barbizon School) who had a studio boat which he used a lot to paint along the Seine and the Oise. Monet seems to have moored his boat close to home at Argenteuil and later Vertheuil and only used it within a short radius of both homes situated on the north bank of the River Seine west of Paris.

Monet created three paintings of his studio boat and this is the first - painted in 1874.

This is the start of a series of posts about paintings of studio boats and about paintings done from studio boats - and of artists painting other artists in their studio boats.

Now - who wants a studio boat?