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

Limpid progression

I've been painting this piece over on my blog for the last week or so and I'm finally calling it done.  I thought I'd show the progression shots of the painting here, as I did with my previous wave painting, Landwash.

This piece is called Limpid, the soft, gentle, clear water seemed to warrant an equally relaxed name.  The painting is oils and 12 x 24" on stretched canvas.

 

 

 

The Lake and waterfowl at Kew Gardens

Last Wednesday I was sat in the sunshine, next to the Lake in the centre of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, drawing this sketch and listening to the complete din which the birds were making combined with what sounded like tree munching.

Spring Green, Sunlight and the Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens
11" x 16" pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Folio Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

It reminded me of city folk who go to the country for some peace and quiet and can't get over how noisy it is because of all the noises from the animals and activities which go on a rural area.

The Lake has a huge amount of waterfowl and they're all very territorial.

When we arrived we had a swan letting some Canada Geese know that they were NOT allowed to get into the water just in front of where I sat.
They tried it once or twice and the swan steamed in with wings set to "ack ack" mode and saw them off.  After which they took to marching up and down on the bank with occasional forays for a bit of weed from the edge.  We were sat there so long they began to ignore us so it was fascinating to watch.

In the meantime the gardeners seemed to be getting rid of prunings although it did sound rather more like they putting an enormous tree through the shredder as the noise was so loud.

Then the mallards had periodic races across the top of the lake.  They seemed to be keen to see how long they could skip across the top of the water before they had to take off

The coots were being noisy as per usual (when are they ever not?)

Every once in a while some other Canada Geese would practice display landings by swooping in and doing a very "look at me" landing in the middle of the lake.  Boys will be boys.....

Believe it or not the sketch is not quite so luminous as the leaves were.  I had the combination of brand spanking new leaves with that incredible green - lit from behind by the sun - at the same time as the sky changed so it became violet blue as it thought about having a thunderstorm.  Thankfully that held off until we got home!

Link:  The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew

Mauzy morning

Newfoundland has its own language of sorts depending on where you go on the island or Labrador.  Words that I have heard in Dorset and Somerset pop up here as dirivatives or glimpses of Ireland are apparent in brogues and phrases.

Words for the weather are no different, and mauzy is one of them.  Here's the definition taken from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English.  Oh yes, there is one.

This word had sprung to mind when I was creating this painting.  The painting is a combination of life and memory.  I had seen this 'mauzy' morning on the drive to work and didn't have a camera with me to try to record it so I committed it to memory as best I could.  The mist, the light, the colours with the sun burning off the edges and highlighting the water.  Its an interesting exercise to see how much visual information remains in your memory to recreate on canvas.  I think it works best when you are very familiar with a subject at various times of day.  The brain seems to do a mental mix and let you pick out the elements that it thinks work best.

mauzy

Definition according to the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:

mauzy a also maus(e)y, mawzy [phonetics unavailable]. Cp EDD mosey adj1 3 'damp and warm, muggy, close; foggy.' Of the weather, damp, foggy, misty or close, sometimes with very light rain or condensation on objects and a cool, gentle wind off the sea; cp CAPLIN (SCULL) WEATHER.

1897 J A Folklore x, 207 Mausey day, one dull and heavy, with no wind and thick mist. 1937 DEVINE 33 A mausey day is a cloudy, foggy day with no wind and a little rain at times.
1957 Daily News 16 Oct, p. 4 Oldtime seal hunters ... expressed the opinion that the long, hard winter, the heavy ice and the 'mauzy' weather of early March were just right for a bumper season. P 105-63 It's a mauzy old day, sir. 1968 KEATING 13-14 'Breeze comin' from duh suddard,' the skipper said. 'Always blows up mauzy weather.' And the fog did indeed roll over the deep as the warm south wind hit the chill air of the bank.
1969 HORWOOD 166 The Caplin Scull is not just a phenomenon of nature, but also a period of the year, and even a special kind of weather—'mausy' weather, with high humidity, frequent fogs or drizzles, easterly winds.
Supplement: mauzy a
1977 MOAKLER 29 We lost the gale sou'east of St Pierre/And lowered dories in the mauzy air. 1988 Evening Telegram 17 May, p. 8 The weather was mausy and...I had it on my mind about a rabbit slip that I never had struck up yet the spring and I wanted to get in and see to that. 

 

Finding the swan

Landwash

12 x 36"  acrylics

Sometimes it is difficult to move past the ugly stage of a painting.  Often it takes some time to pass before the mood and inspiration comes to help ease it along to where it should be.  Most pieces have their swan in them, it just takes a bit of coaxing sometimes to get it out into the open.

I thought I'd share the final images of a couple of pieces that I showed here in varying stages which are now complete.

The first, Landwash, is in acrylics on a 12" x 36" gallery canvas.  From the last piece I had shown here I added some glazes of colour to the sea and shore to give it interest and break up the expanse of silvery water.  The sun hitting high points of the water and glittering across the surface completed it.

Earth's Eye

6 x 12 oils

The second piece was a study of a the water surface from an image taken at Gallow's Cove Pond late last summer.  I had put down the values and hadn't done much more with it, posting it here with another reflective water surface painting.   I hauled the canvas out again and added some detail to it.  The painting was done in oils on a reclaimed canvas 6 x 12" and the surface was a little uneven, so this will likely remain a study.

River and hills: Experimenting with an old collagraph cut off

River and Hills, 14x 4 inches, collagraph and cp, Vivien Blackburn


details to see the texture:

I came across this 14x4 inch collagraph in the 'do-something-with-this-later' drawer. I think it was an offcut from a larger collagraph plate, cropped before it was printed and then printed with the same inks that I'd been using (green and yellow), just to see what happened.

It had originally been vertical and part of a seahorses/underwater series of printmaking. Looking at it horizontally I saw a landscape with a river winding through.

Using coloured pencils I worked on it in warm rosy hues to contrast with the cooler green. I want to darken and cool with deep blue the area around the right hand tree a little before I'll call it finished I think. What do you think?

Coloured pencil works really well over collagraphs as it gels with the graininess of the print - which I'm pretty sure was on Fabriano Rosapina paper, which has a nice velvety feel adding to the grain. I've never been happy with the results if I've used watercolour or oil over them because of the sharp difference - the way it fills in the grain unlike the printed surface.

After working a bit too tightly sometimes recently :>(, it was very freeing to simply play with an image, pulling the landscape from the abstract shapes.

If you are interested you can see other collagraphs and the process here

54 paintings later

February 2nd  7.30am

My project carries on, dragging me with it.  I am into the third month already with 54 paintings under my belt.  I have discovered gouache, or body colour, which is a medium that I haven't used for years and one that offers many possibilities for the plein air painter. 


March 2nd.  Gouache.

I have also discovered patience, enduring day after day of grey mist and very wet Cornish drizzle, then finding out that I actually love the grey misty rain.  I am patiently waiting for the Spring and in the process, I suppose because of a heightened awareness of my environment, noticing the tiniest stirrings of fresh green shoots in the woods and fields as I walk to my vantage point.


21 February  Watercolour and Gouache.

 I am trying out different techniques, finding confidence in and a familiarity with the media that I am using that I havent felt before.  I am also becoming bolder and minding not a fig what passers by think, in other words, happily inhabiting the role of "that mad artist woman"  (painting at night often brings that remark!)



February 8th.  Starry Starry Sky.

Apart from local interest I have had some from further afield and a venue for exhibiting the finished collection.  So this project, a few short months into it, has already begun to acheive much of what I had hoped it would.  As a direct result from all this painting activity, I am holding plein air painting workshops here in Cornwall throughout the summer, my blog will have the links,  if anyone is down my way, give me a shout, we can go painting together.  I shall also be at the Bristol Affordable Art Fair in May with Beside The Wave Gallery  (I link you to their blog as I am the official blog reporter!) as their token artist, if you are in the Bristol area why not visit, seek me out, I shall be there, in my best bib and tucker with a label on me for identification purposes.  Very soon I shall be making another little film, this time of the actual painting process, on location, as I am testing QR codes for use with the gallery.  I shall post the film here and, hopefully, explain the QR code properly.
As a final note though, I must say just how afferming and valuable is the interest from other bloggers, artists and non artists.  Never underestimate the value of commenting, it helps to keep me going and I know it does for other artists too.