Over the past weekend I’ve just taken part in an excellent mixed exhibition with the West Norfolk Artists Association. The venue was the new Thornham village hall, on the North Norfolk coast. Forty artists submitted work, all on a ‘Coast’ theme and the show really did look good.
I’m very pleased to say that two of of my watercolours were sold at the event, both to the same buyer, a matching pair! I’ve shown one of them before on this blog, a few months ago, but here’s the chance to see both of them together. For the watercolour artists among you, most of the painting is just the white of the paper (Waterford 140lb rough), with the image simply painted using a large sable hair brush. The paintings are really monochromes, but the colours used are mixed from French Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, and a tiny touch of Scarlet Lake. Hopefully a good example of ‘less is more’.Misty Days – Burnham Overy Staithe 2. Watercolour 15ins x 11insMisty Days at Burnham Overy Staithe 1. Watercolour 15ins x 11ins
Every few weeks I run an afternoon watercolour group here at the studio, usually on a Tuesday. Obviously these groups had to take a break while we were travelling in Australia, but now they are back on track.
The first session of the year was yesterday afternoon, when we had some lovely sunshine on the studio. Not warm enough to work outside though! These session s are in “paint along with Steve” format, so I do a demonstration at the easel and the group paint along step by step. You can see my own painting here, the subject being a well known Norfolk landmark, Weybourne windmill. Weybourne is up on the North Norfolk coast, not far from Sheringham.Spring at Weybourne Mill. Watercolour on Arches 140lb rough, 15ins x 11ins.
The key to any representational painting such as this can be summed up in one word – drawing. It doesn’t have to be absolutely accurate in terms of the exact size or shape of the objects, but what is so important is that nothing must look wrong. Another artist once said to me “don’t worry about everything being right, just make sure that nothing looks wrong”. Hopefully I managed to achieve this with the painting of the mill.
The actual painting itself is simple, with a limited palette of Ultramarine Blue, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna and Cadmium Yellow Pale. The sky is a graduated wash of Ultramarine fading to Raw Sienna near the horizon. While it was still damp I lifted out some clouds with a scrunched up piece of paper towel, using a rolling motion.
If you would like to join me for one of these session just get in touch using the details on my Contact page. The next two will be on Tuesday 24th March and Tuesday 14th April. Early booking is essential as I can only take six participants per session. The cost is £20 per person.
On Friday 6th March We drove up to Horncastle in Lincolnshire, where I was booked to do a watercolour demonstration for the Horncastle Art Group. And what a nice evening we had, with around thirty group members gathered around me at the easel while I painted and talked about the working methods of well known East Anglian artist Edward Seago.Fishing Village Norfolk after Edward Seago. Watercolour 22ins x 15ins. on Arches 140lb rough.
There’s so much that can be learnt from studying the work of the masters, and Seago was certainly one of those. Although probably best known as an oil painter, he was a highly skilled in watercolour, with an amazing freshness and deceptive simplicity to his paintings. Somehow I managed to fit in two demonstration paintings during the evening and you can see them here. I obviously felt encouraged by my audience and by the subject, so I went at a fairly rapid pace!
The first painting of a Norfolk Fishing Village is very typical of many such scenes that Seago painted. A very limited palette of just two colours, French Ultramarine and Light Red, help the atmosphere, and the composition carries the eye effortlessly through the work.A Seago style tree painting. Watercolour 22ins x 15ins. Waterford 140lb rough.
The second painting, a simple study of a sky, some fields and a tree, is again very typical of many Seago Norfolk landscapes. It’s all about atmosphere and the use of tone to draw the eye to the focal point of the work, the large tree. Again the palette of colours was confined to Ultramarine and Light Red, with the addition of a little Cadmium Yellow Pale to make the greens.
Thanks to Peter Smith and all at Horncastle Art Group for making Margaret and me so welcome. We hope to see you again at some time in the future!
As I write this post we have already left Tasmania behind and are up in Sydney on the final leg of our Australia trip. As so often happens when I’m travelling, the amount of painting that I actually manage is very modest. the time fills up with actually going from place to place, and simply looking at things rather than painting them.Cape Bruny, Tasmania. Watercolour on Arches 140lb rough, size A3.
However, while of the beautiful island of Tasmania I did manage to get my painting gear out on one occasion, because I just couldn’t resist this scene of Cape Bruny, at the southern tip of Bruny Island. The weather was very British, that is wild, windy and threatening rain, but the Cape provided a dramatic scene from a viewpoint on the long winding gravel road that leads to the lighthouse and a small museum.
There have been many other scenes that have made me think “I must paint that, but I haven’t got time now”. Thankfully, the digital camera can act as a notepad until more time is available. And that may well not be until we are back in good old Blighty.
Happy New Year to you all. I hope it will be a good on for all artists and art lovers. Particularly I hope it will be a healthy year, as if you don’t have good health then life becomes much more difficult, as we are finding with Margaret’s broken ankle. But, she’s hopping around and has been for a few rides in the wheelchair, so we’re on the right track. The plaster should come off in early February.
Meanwhile, at the coalface of art, I have not managed to find much time to paint, but I have managed a little. Here are two new paintings both done using my travelling watercolour kit that I squeezed into the already bulging suitcase.The Lighthouse at Split Point, Great Ocean Road. Watercolour on Arches 140lb rough paper 20ins x 14ins.
The first painting was done after a visit to Split Point lighthouse, on the coast of Victoria near the start of the Great Ocean Road. We were touring round of few of the villages that dot that part of the coast, all with very British names such as Torquay and Anglesea. We stopped at the lighthouse, which makes an imposing view, and I might have hauled out the easel there and then. Except, the car park was jammed with cars and there were several million flies ready as eager onlookers. So, a few quick photos, and the painting was done later on at my “Ocean Grove studio” where we were staying as guests of our good Aussie friend Merridy.The Back Yard at Maryborough, Victoria. Watercolour on Arches 140lb rough paper 20ins x 14ins.
Merridy also has a house in central Victoria, near the town of Maryborough,and that’s where we are now. A very different place to Ocean Grove, with the emphasis on farming, vineyards, and the country life. The house in in 20 acres of paddocks and woodland, so I wandered out late one afternoon and found this typical Australian back yard view, with rather arid soil, eucalyptus gumtrees and a few bits of fencepost and old corrugated iron scattered around. I did the painting on the spot, using an old shed for shade as the temperature was pushing 35 degrees Centigrad. Phew! Even hotter today, over 40 but thankfully some rain has come and it’s cooled off. I had intended to paint another different scene today but suddenly realised, I’m out of paper! Next stop the art shop.
Further to my last post, we have now made it down to Ocean Grove, on the coast south-west of Melbourne. Here we have a good friend, Merridy, and are staying at her house on Dare Street. The house has a great view out over the Bass Strait and it also has a lovely deck area which I managed to commandeer for a few hours painting.Painting in progress, on the studio deck at Dare Street. Berwon Head can just be seen in the far distance.
So, here you can see the “studio” with a painting on my super lightweight travelling easel. The easel is assembled from a camera tripod on to which I have fitted a piece of thin plywood. To do this I used a tripod adaptor which I bought before leaving the UK, from Ken Bromley Art Supplies. The adaptor fits in the head of the tripod just as a camera would do, and screws to a small piece of fairly thick wood which is then glued to the plywood. Very light in weight and quite sturdy.
The painting on the easel is a view from our “home” out towards a local landmark, Berwon Head. There was a terrific sunset over the Head the other evening and I knew I would have to paint it. The next morning I set up the easel where I had a good view and managed to recreate the sunset from my visual memory. Well it may not be exactly like it, but it’s close enough! The tricky part of the painting was the foreground, as I wanted to give an impression of the trees that lie between us and the sea, without doing anything detailed. Hopefully I managed to achieve that, by a combination of painting round negative shapes, and scraping out damp paint with a small, blunt, knife that I carry for that purpose.
The colours used were French Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, Scarlet Lake and just a touch of Raw Sienna in the sky. I hope you enjoy it and I will bring you more from the down under studio soon!Sunset at Berwon Head, Ocean Grove, Victoria, Australia. 20ins x 14ins on Arches 140lb rough paper.
G’day everybody, from the Yarra Valley east of Melbourne. As regular readers of this Blog will know, we are touring out here to escape the worst of the British winter! It hasn’t all been plain sailing, Margaret broke her ankle in a hiking accident so the rest of the tour will feature a wheelchair as well as an easel among my paraphernalia.
The result of all this is that the art gear has not seen any action yet. But I’m sure it will. Meanwhile, here are a couple more recent paintings that I completed just before we left the UK. One is of a boat at Burnham Overy Staithe, always a favourite subject of mine, where I have created what I hope is a misty feel by leaving a great deal of white paper and using a very limited palette of colours.
The second painting shows a view across the fields to Snettisham church, a very prominent local landmark. Again, just a few colours used, with stronger tonal values and colours in the foreground to give a feeling of depth.
Nest time I post here, I hope to be able to show a painting or two of Australia. there are many fascinating subjects here, although we haven’t seen any kangaroos yet!Misty Days 2 – Burnham Overy Staithe. Watercolour 14ins x 10ins.Across the Fields to Snettisham Church. Watercolour 15ins x 11ins.
A quick post here, as I’m currently sitting in a library in Melbourne, Australia! But here are a couple of new paintings which I first showed at my recent Open Studio. I’ll be painting out here in Oz over the next few weeks, well months actually, so I will post some of those works here, when I’ve actually had the chance to pick up a brush!A small watercolour and ink study. Windswept Trees at Sunset. 8ins x 6ins on Arches 300lb rough paper.This is a fairly large watercolour that I painted as a result of my recent trip to the city of York. A great place with many good painting subjects. Coppergate, York. 20ins x 14ins on Arches 140lb rough paper.
This weekend is the opening of the Dersingham Christmas Art Trail, with eight artists showing their studios off to the public. Down here at Alexandra Close we’ve had a steady stream of visitors, with plenty of friends coming to wish us bon voyage to Australia.
The studio, ready for visitorsHere’s a shot of the studio lying in readiness for the expected hoards of eager art buyers. Well, maybe! I will post some photos of the new work that I’ve been doing a little later, but it’s a mixture of old and new. some Norfolk landscapes, and some of my new “cityscapes” featuring places as diverse as Norwich, York, and Agra, India.
My last post was about the upcoming Paint Out Norwich painting competition in which I was taking part. So it was that on a very wild and windy day last Tuesday, Margaret and I travelled to Norwich where I was to paint against the clock and against twenty-seven other artists.
The event was organised by the Hostry at Norwich Cathedral, as part of the autumn Hostry Festival. We met the other artists there and saw this superb building where the exhibition of completed works was to be staged. The Paint Out Norwich team were very welcoming and, considering that this was the first running of the event, pretty efficient most of the time. Our base during the event was the Maddermarket Theatre where we had room to store some of our gear and get a bit of lunch at their cafe between the morning and afternoon sessions. Mercifully this was only a few hundred yards from our hotel, because my efforts to slim down my en plein air painting kit were only partially successful!Wednesday afternoon with me outside the library at Norwich Forum. You can see my Winsor & Newton easel – a bit heavy but very sturdy.
As for the painting, on Wednesday and Thursday, it was actually great fun to be out in this beautiful city and have three hours to ‘do a view’. Yes, it was cold but at least it didn’t rain! There were four sessions, one morning 9 – 12 and one afternoon 1.30 – 4.30 and we were sent to a different location for each one. Once at the location you were free to paint any view, which meant that there was never any difficulty finding a good composition.
I resisted the temptation just to do pen and wash sketching, and set up an easel with a half-imperial sheet of 140lb weight Arches rough paper for each session. It meant carrying the easel and quite a bit of other stuff, but I enjoyed tackling a full scale watercolour painting. Of the four I completed, I enjoyed doing them all, but there are always things that you can see when you look at a painting that you might have done better, or at least differently. But at the end of the three hours, that’s it, the paintings are taken from you and no more fiddling is allowed!
Here are the two that I consider the most successful. One where I was looking down on the city from the ramparts of Norwich Castle, and one where I set up my easel by the library which is inside The Forum, a fantastic building buzzing with people, cafes, lots going on. It was also a bit warmer than the street outside.
I didn’t win any prizes, but I enjoyed the experience and will be doing more plein air painting in the future. It’s very different to working in the comfort of the studio and cityscapes are different to my usual landscapes. But I like ’em! Figures in the Forum. Watercolour 22ins x 15ins on Arches Rough paperLooking Down – from Norwich Castle. Watercolour 22ins x 15ins on Arches Rough paper
You can see all the paintings done by the twenty-eight artists at the Paint Out Norwich exhibition, on now until the 2nd November, at the Hostry, Norwich Cathedral, Tombland, Norwich.
