Morning on the Thames

If the conditions are right you get that sort of low laying mist across the surface of the river which the sun burns away with great speed. But for a few short minutes thee most wonderful effects can be seen. 

16 x 20 inches Oil on canvas

2 New Large Landscapes

So I decided to do a few larger landscapes. The thinking behind this is largely based around the idea that they will be too big to be ignored. I've done 4 so far of which 2 are shown here. They are both 36 x 36 inches, oil on canvas. The late winter picture is from earlier this year when the river had risen to a point where it was almost over the towpath. The autumn painting is from late October this year. I'm reasonably happy with both pictures. They each took about a week to do.

Close up to a painting

How to spot an artist at an art exhibition?

They'll be the ones with their noses about half an inch away from the pictures.

It's not a great way to see a painting but artists want to be able to get that close because then they can see the technique. For the non artist it can be a bit of a shock to see just how crude it all looks when you get near to even the most famous of works. It just becomes a mass of blobs and streaks and you begin to wonder whether you might just have been better to have stuck to looking at them in books. But the painter gains much from such chances. They get to understand how the artist built up the work. What came first? Was it quickly painted, wet paint into wet paint or does it become clear that days elapsed between those various layers. One of the great myths about impressionism is that the pictures were hurriedly executed out in the field, all in a rush. Close inspection soon shows that for most of these pictures it simply wasn't so.

So here's one of my own with some close ups included. Early(ish) on a June morning about a month before the start of the regatta. The new floating grandstand is in place and the pontoons that make up the work platforms are still to be seen.....and it's horribly, horribly splodgy! : )

Take care.......

Time and the Artist

There tend to be a fairly standard set of questions that people ask me about the pictures that I paint. What inspires you? Do you sell them? Have you ever considered getting a proper job?

Another regular one is 'How long does it take you to paint a picture?' My usual answer is that I don't really know. This is because, like a lot of artists, I don't paint one picture at a time. I can have everything from about 4 through to 10 pictures on the go and will work on each one for perhaps an hour or so at a time. But now I have a sort of answer, at least for the painting that accompanies this blog.

The winter has been long and hard and as I write this, on the last day of March, there is snow falling up in Scotland. Here it's been dull and rainy for about a week and spring is just creeping in. That's resulted in me having a hard time trying to find things to paint and I've arrived at a situation where it's one painting at a time.

On Sunday the Women's University Boat Race took place here at Henley (there's actually about half a dozen races in all) and the sky cleared for just long enough for me to get 1 good photograph. I therefore started on Monday, just underpainting and blocking in the main features which took maybe about 1-2 hours. I was busy Tuesday morning and so didn't paint until the afternoon. I worked up the picture a bit more, mostly giving the objects rather more definition. Then today I've pushed it through to a finish, working from about 9am until 4pm minus a very generous lunch plus tea and cake breaks and a trip to the post office.

So in conclusion I would think it's taken about 7-8 hours including wandering and nibbles.

Now what am I going to do tomorrow?