Sidmouth, Devon UK, 15" x 11"
A warm up for the up and coming Bristol Savages visit to Sidmouth Devon, and plenty of plein air opportunities. Hope the UK weather stays good for us and there's no rain and plenty of sunshine. This is a sketch based on a photo I took on a visit a few years ago in Autumn. Lovely sea front with large Victorian style buildings. Just had to get in a large Ice Cream sign for effect...
Painted on Saunders Waterford Cold Press Paper 300 gms.
| |
|
Here are the two demos I did last year to Exmouth Art Group as a one day workshop. So what I normally do on the workshops is that we do things in stages - first I do the outline sketch, then the attendees do their sketch, then I do the first wash, then they do their wash...and so on....
Each painting here is 22" x 15"
A rural lane and an exercise in simplifying the scene and composition
Newquay harbour and an exercise in painting boats and simple reflections
All painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms paper
| |
|
Lynmouth, UK, 22" x 15"
A demo I did last year to the Chippenham Art Society. Normally when I do demos to art groups I start the session by showing 8 possible scenes (normally photos I have taken relating to the chosen subject type) - in this case a seascape or harbour scene was requested. Then with a show of hands and trying to get a bit audience participation the photo with the most votes is the painting subject for the night. So this was chosen from a number of different harbour scenes - mainly UK ones.
Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms
| |
|
Lynmouth, UK, 15" x 11"
The medieval looking Rhenish Tower at the end of Lynmouth Harbour and a low tide scene. Sometimes the exposed harbour bed can make for a far more interesting scene than high tide. We have random rocks, little pools with reflections, mooring cables & lines (which we can place anywhere we want) plus the opportunity to have some figures walking. Painted with my 3-colour palette - so quite a bit of colour mixing needed.
Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms.
| |
|
Dartmouth, UK, 22" x 15".
A demo painting to the Highworth Art Society. When I do demos to art groups, I normally hand out about 8 photos of a particular type of landscape, then we do a vote / show of hands and go for the most popular one. This time it was the Dartmouth Inner Harbour. A good practice of doing a graded wash for the water and some careful painting around objects like the boats.
Painted on Saunders Waterford Cold Press 300gms.
| |
|
Exmouth, Devon, 11" x 15"
Based on an image from TV property programme - I pressed the pause button and painted what I saw. A good sort of picture from a composition point of view being like an 'H'. So a bit of interest in the middle with those two figures and framed either side by the buildings. I added a bit of foreground shadow so I could have the figures almost merging in to it and then some dark shadows behind to add some contrast with them.
| |
|
Watermouth Bay, Devon, UK, 15" x 11".
This was actually the result of a video I did, but decided to not upload to my YouTube Channel. But the more I look at it now (it was done maybe 6 months ago) there are some qualities I quite like. At the time, I wasn't happy with the boats. They weren't as well defined as I normally do them. But now they look a little more arty. I think the theme for my demo was going to be wet in wet as a watercolour technique and you can see why...
| |
|
My latest demo - this time how to get some inspiration from a TV program for a painting subject.
| |
|
Lynmouth, England, 15" x 11".
The end of the harbour wall in the North Devon coastal village of Lynmouth, and the 'Rhenish Tower' perched on the end (the odd looking medieval tower building). Based on a photo I took a while back, I rearranged the boats and placed a couple of figures to give a feeling of a working harbour. It was quite quiet when I visited in December so you had to use your imagination a bit.
| |
|
Watercolour, 11" x 15"
Bristol Savages Wednesday Sketch night and the topic - "Always look on the bright side of life". I decided not to go down the Monty Python route and the song, but instead adapted a previous scene I have done of the inner harbour at Dartmouth. So a bright side of the harbour if you like. Plenty of darks in this one and against the light. Bit of white gouache in the final stages for the street lights etc...
| |
|
