Flooding on the Thames

Two paintings of the recent flooding on the Thames. Both pictures are 20 x 30 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.......

One week, four paintings

My last blog was about the time it takes for me to produce one painting. This was partly as a result of having so little to paint but bad weather doesn't last forever and so last Saturday a small break occurred and I was able to get back downstream to Marlow (twinned with Marly le Roi it's difficult to resist).

As a result of this trip I seemed to have enough material for 4 paintings and thought it might be interesting to set myself the challenge of getting them all done within a week. Well I started on Sunday and am pleased to say I finished mid morning Friday with a day and a half to spare. Clearly having big skies helped as these don't take long to work up and there's a lot of water as well. I'd like to think that the various views will allow people to piece together at least a part of the town's waterfront layout. The paintings are all oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches.

Given that we're moving into longer days and lots of light the tempting prospect of a picture a day may have to be examined!

And now I think it's time to relax, eat cake and draw a few cows...Annie's been hanging around all morning with a silly hat on!

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?

Two landscape paintings of Marlow

Wandered downstream from Henley last Friday to the next large town which is Marlow. It took about 2 and a half hours to get there, the ground being a little muddy in places. Saw a bloke painting and so I went and had a chat with him. Turned out to be Roy Connelly, he has an exhibition coming up at Island Fine Art on the Isle of Wight at the end of the month. I've also got some pictures at the same gallery, so it was nice to meet him and talk art for a while. I don't think he minded being interrupted as it gave him an excuse to put the brushes down for a bit.

Anyway as you can see I got a couple of paintings from the trip. They'll be more to do once Spring gets underway and there's a bit of green on the trees.

A larger landscape painting.

It tends to be the case that, after a time, most artists find a size of canvas that they are comfortable with and thereafter the bulk of their work will be to that size. When I started painting about 15 years ago I nearly always worked at 10 x 14 inches. Gradually I've found myself painting larger pictures and now use 16 x 20 inches for nearly all of my landscapes...but every now and again......

I've had this canvas hanging around for about 3 years. Because of it's size it's been stored under the bed, but I knew it was there. All 30 x 40 inches of it!

So how to approach it?

I decided the easiest way was to repaint a 16 x 20 picture that I felt had worked well enough to be scaled up. This made things rather easier and I could have a degree of confidence about it that would not otherwise have been there.

It took about a week to paint. It really is a case of just using larger brushes at the start. There were not really any problems and it compares well enough to the smaller version. Of course the distance that the picture needs to be viewed at is such that I have to open a door a stand halfway up the stairs to get far enough away from it, but I could do with the exercise.

Shall I paint any more large pictures...perhaps...we'll have to wait and see.

Another Autumn landscape

Just a field behind a road; there is a public footpath which runs along the side of it. When I first walked by it in the Summer, it didn't have much appeal but over the passing months, I began to see a painting within it. The Autumn colours helped to add interest and there are a few cattle as well...

20 x 16 inches oil on canvas

Painting Autumn

You know what it's like: you keep walking past something and gradually it worms it's way into your head. Like Alice, you expect to find a note on it that says 'paint me'; so that's what happened with this work. I don't suppose it will surprise anyone if I say that it's near the river! It's a hedgerow along Remenham Lane - the sort of thing that yields blackberries and, very close to this bit, sloes.

I took a couple of pictures of it and then retired to the flat to have a think. There seemed to be plenty of colour in it and that gave me the possibility of perhaps approaching it in a slightly different fashion from how I would usually paint. It ended up being very different! Somewhere during the painting of it I found that I had started applying some of the colour unmixed and straight from the tube. For me, this a bold step. I don't think it represents a great revolution but at the same time, I'm working on another picture which looks far more like my usual output. I see no reason not to tailor my approach picture by picture but I think I learned from the experience and it was fun! The first couple of piccies are close-ups; the final one is the finished picture.

Two small paintings

What do you do when it all goes wrong? It's a tricky one because there is no right answer. Today I found myself in just such a position and for a while I wasn't very happy with the world.

I left the flat just after 9am and walked my easel through town and back to where I had had my first painting adventure a couple of weeks ago. Since last there, I'd had a look at a local map and it is shown as an old deer park (insert joke of your choice). I had it in mind to paint a rather nice oak tree - it has had a few knocks and has a certain character; it was also on a raised bank which had very little grass growing on it and the bare earth gave a nice contrast to the overall greenness.

I started work on my 10 x 8 inch canvas and managed to swiftly pass through all the regular stages of painting. I could paint; I could fix the problem; I could not fix the problem; I wondered why I ever bothered picking up a brush?! So after an hour or so I hated it! I had good reason; it was a poor little thing, without life and so what to do?

Sometimes it is best to walk away... but I decided not to - partly out of the fear of having to go back through town so soon after leaving it because, let's be honest, everybody who lives here watches my every move! Instead I took out the trusty palette knife and took off all the paint that I'd put on. For those who don't paint with oils I have to tell you that this does not destroy the image; it just blurs it a bit but allows for fresh paint to be placed over the top. I set to work for a second time and within ten minutes, all was well. The picture started to come together and I was happy! By 12.30 it was as finished as I wanted it to be and so a swift break for lunch (insert chocolate bar of your choice) was taken...

I moved about 100 metres to find the second view. An easier subject for me as it was more of an open landscape. I put it together rather rapidly and it's not bad; so nice to have the Autumn colours making all the trees look so different. Both pictures will require a little extra work but not much. So the day ended on a positive note and I was back home by 3pm...

Painting 'en plein air' part 3

Once more into my breeches dear friends! Another nice sunny day, so off I went... Today would be 'painting in public' day because I had decided to go down to Hambleden Lock. It's about two and a half miles downstream and usually with a steady flow of traffic passing through it. My journey there is always enjoyable because I'm required to do nothing more than walk along the side of the river. So even carrying all of the painting things it's not a chore.

It's not much of an exaggeration to suggest that you could set the easel up in any direction and find a suitable subject at Hambleden Lock but I felt that it was important to keep things simple, so I chose a view just beyond the lock itself. The painting went well enough; the morning light restricting the colour range. For the first hour or so I used only white, sap green and a couple of blues. Then, as the sun rose, the scene rapidly changed and I found that I was increasingly painting an image that no longer existed! By 10.30am, the picture was finished as far as I wanted, so I broke for a Mars bar only to find it had been sitting in the sun and was partially melted. Despite licking the wrapper I must report that some chocolate was lost!

So what to do for the second picture? Well the scene had changed and moving the easel is a pain, so I stayed where I was. Looking back I should have changed or taken a longer break because I rapidly slipped into painting on autopilot. I literally woke up after half an hour without any real memory of what I'd been doing. It's an easy enough thing to do but doesn't make for good practice. Because of the change in light a greater range of colours was called for: Naples yellow and a hint of red. The picture's not bad - it'll have a finish back home. I find I'm becoming increasingly aware of how you could pass a lifetime just painting the same view again and again; the light changes so rapidly and if you throw the seasons into the mix, there is endless variation.

By 12.30pm I'd done enough for the day. I packed up and started the walk back. I shall say a little about the walk because it was as near perfect as you might wish: warm, with a gentle breeze; the sun low enough to cast respectable shadows; the light was wonderful - everything was a painting!

And then the Thames!

When I was a child it was almost dead as it passed through London. Pollution had choked it and little lived in it. But today - well, upstream I grant you - I could see clear water down to at least 3 feet. I can't name the many different plants that are growing in it but they're there and in and around them are fish! I've seen the tiny fry before but today larger fish of 4 -5 inches and in their hundreds. My guess is they're trout... butI could be wrong!

Thank you!

How to paint reflections in water

Not an attempt to write an exhaustive step-by-step post; just a few observations in the hope that it might help. Reflections in water tends to be one of those things that people find tricky, so to begin with, remember that it's all just marks of paint on a flat surface! If it helps, don't even think in terms of object, water, reflection.


A reflection is best painted at the same time as the object that is casting the reflection and certainly in the very early stages, they can be painted almost as a single object. Remember that a reflection (even a very good one) will be more muted in its tonal range and brightness. A reflection must also follow the plane of the water; the more disturbed the water, the more disturbed the reflection. As with all painting, start with your biggest brush and end with your smallest. If it all goes horribly wrong, it's not the end of the world!

And finally, in the name of self promotion, I happen to have a picture in this week's Etsy voter!! So if you have a vote to cast and feel like giving it to me, here is the link - thank you! http://www.etsy.com/voter_list.php?ref=voter&room_id=63

Composition in landscape painting

Now I have to say that this blog was, in part, inspired by a visit to the newly opened exhibition at the National Gallery in London. 'Corot to Monet: a fresh look at landscape from the collection' started on July 8th and runs through to the 20th of September. It's an examination of the development of landscape painting in France from the later part of the 18th through to towards the end of the 19th century. It's free to get in and well worth a look if you're around that part of London. It helps to show that impressionism was, in many respects, just the next step along a gradual line of progression and not the great revolution that it is often portrayed as. But it also got me thinking about something which has annoyed me for a while and that is the subject of basic composition.

There are many, many books available in any large bookshop or art suppliers, that are intended to help those who are learning to paint (that's all of us). Some are better than others and all serve the very useful purpose of allowing the writer to earn a bit of money. When it comes to books on landscape painting, the question of composition soon comes to the fore. Now they nearly all follow the same pattern of suggesting that the canvas be split into 3rds, both vertically and horizontally and that the focal point of the picture is then placed at one of the intersections. It's good advice and helps to simplify things.




My bugbear is that somewhere along the line this 'advice' seems to have become a 'rule' and that to deviate from it is something close to a mortal sin. It was therefore with some pleasure that my tour around the exhibition revealed picture after picture which simply did not conform with this 'rule'. The division between land and sky can be at any point. It is perfectly possible to paint a landscape painting which splits the canvas into 2 equal parts of land and sky, with the focal point in the middle of the canvas. It's not the best idea to try it with your very first painting, but it's there to be done. Corot manages it very nicely with a picture of Avignon, almost to show how easy it can be.

So just to conclude by saying, there's good advice out there to be had, but there are no rules.

Enjoy!

PS As we're all fallible, there's a lovely painting by Corot in the last room which has the most wonderfully wonky water. Made me feel so much better about my own work.

Landscape series painting

Series painting (a group of paintings of the same subject) is undoubtedly most closely associated with the work of Claude Monet. From the late 1880's onwards it became the central theme of his artistic output and he produced many groups of works around different motifs. From the haystacks that lay behind his house at Giverny, through to the front facade of Rouen Cathedral and finally back to the lily ponds of his own garden, he closely observed and recorded the effects of the constantly changing light that fell upon his chosen subjects.

But series painting is not the exclusive domain of this one great man. His friend and fellow impressionist, Alfred Sisley, explored similar territory with his views of the Church of Notre Dame at Moret in the mid 1890's and Cezanne's continued interest around Mont Sainte Victoire can also be viewed as an exploration of a single theme. Artists less well known to the public have also found fascination in painting around a narrow subject base. The English artist, Sir George Clausen painted his own series of brilliant observed pictures around haystacks in the late 19th and early 20th century.


Now I have to say that I'd never really contemplated the idea of painting in series. This may be in part because I hadn't until recently found a suitable subject. But in January of this year I moved to Henley-On-Thames - a place with no shortage of interest for a landscape painter - and on my walks along the Thames tow path, I gradually found myself taking a liking to a particular stand of trees. They stand some ten metres from the river, just the other side of a small fence, in an area of traditional meadow. Perhaps because of their relative isolation it is easier to pick out the changes that they undergo as the sun moves around them. I eventually settled on two of the trees which, from the angle that I have painted them, makes it almost appear to be a single specimen. I've done 3 pictures so far and expect to expand this over the next couple of months to six and then perhaps nine. I am finding it interesting to paint the same basic scene over and over; the more that I do so, the more able I am to concentrate on the differences that occur and I suspect that the pictures may become more subtle as I go along. My abilities as an artist are limited and this is a new challenge but if I wish to understand and progress I need to push myself in new ways. I've included the three that I've done so far here; as usual please feel free to ask any questions...