Watercolour 15" x 11"
Another rural scene leading on from my last posting. I am trying to perfect the look of tall pine trees. They seem to loose their lower branches, save for a few stubs, and then gain more of a lollipop look about them. Here the forest is mixed in with some deciduous species and the foreground is winter grass. Good to do a bit of scraping to get the grassy look, which I don't normally do.
Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press Paper, 300 gms.
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Watercolour, 15" x 11"
I am trying to do some very rural scenes now and again - try and get away from the normal street scene, bright sunlight sort of thing. So just picking an ordinary country lane, trees in the background. The time of the year would be I think mid winter - still a few russet leaves on the oak trees and some fallen debris on the ground. But I had to have a little sunlight coming into the scene.
Painted on Saunders Waterford Cold Press, 300 gms
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Watercolour, 15" x 11"
Bristol Savages sketch night and the topic for the evening was "the joys of the open road". So we have 2 hours to produce a painting and no access to any reference material (e.g. do a google search on your mobile!!). Always a challenge and always enjoyable. Most of the artists came up with a similar theme - a windy country road, a vista and some figures...
Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms.
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Watercolour, 15" x 11"
Bristol Savages Wednesday night sketch night and the topic from the Chairman was "Nothing new under the Sun". So we then have 2 hours to come up with a painting without recourse to reference material. I took a typical French countryside view - a chateau, a few pencil-thin Italian Cypress Trees and some deep shadows across the scene.
Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press, 300 gms
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Chania, Crete, 15" x 11"
Tricky part with this painting was getting the trees right - their edges against the background and the softness of their colour. I let watercolour do what it does best - with combining wet washes a nice combination of colours appear and interesting bleeding patterns - just were I want them in the tree canopy.
Painted on Saunders Waterford, Cold Press Paper, 300 gms
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Tuscany, Italy, 22" x 15"
A quickie done in about 30 minutes as a demo on the last day of the workshop I held in Tuscany this year. The village of Monte dei Bianchi is up there somewhere. Lovely majestic peaks of the mountains in the distance and the sweeping shadows of the nearby trees I thought made for an ideal watercolour demo without too much detail and the need to put in figures etc. Also done with a 3 colour palette consisting of a blue, yellow and red of course and a neutral tint.
Painted on Saunders Waterford Cold Press, 300 gms
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Tuscany, Italy, 22" x 15"
A plein air demonstration painting from my 2017 workshop in Tuscany, care of the Watermill at Posara. The Monte dei Bianchi is a quiet picturesque village with plenty of panoramic views across the surrounding valleys. What attracted me to this scene (apart from being in the shade on a rather warm morning) was the framing of the view left and right, a focal point of the palm tree and shadow cast over to the wall. I balance this and add in a bit more detail with a figure on the left coming into the shade of the church.
Painted on Saunders Waterford 300gms paper, NOT surface
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Watercolour 15" x 11"
One of my submissions to the annual Bristol Savages Exhibition 2017, entitled 'Golden' which was actually a Wednesday night sketch topic. So an Autumnal scene and an emphasis on trees with a golden tint to them. A composition with the bridge and figure walking a dog which I have used before, but easily adapted to this scene. Nice to get a light figure in front of a dark background. As a further enhancement, I could have had the figure reflected in some water!
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Bayonne, France, 15" x 11".
A thank you to Jean-Luc who sent me a reference photo for this painting of Bayonne Church in Autumn. I suppose there are a few different approaches to painting a light coloured tree against a dark background - 1) Negative painting (dark background first then the tree), 2) Paint tree first, let dry/ish then do the background, or possibly 3) a load of thick body paint for the tree on a dry background. I went for a variant of 1) and 3) !
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Madrid, Spain, 15" x 11"
A fairly simple composition - here an open area near to the Plaza Mayor square in central Madrid. The big challenge was how to deal with the trees being a similar tone to the background buildings. I could have done the trees separate to the building, but instead went for a bit of 'body' paint - so the buildings were almost dry and with a thicker green mix I rendered the trees. I also decided to make a feature of the large balls - like huge canon balls, serving as bollards marking off the pedestrian areas.
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