I'm a landscape painter living in the UK. I paint the countryside around my home, which, for me, is a place of beauty and pleasure. I love the look of it year round, in every season.
Paint Landscape features posts about my paintings and drawings, and my thoughts about painting. All my paintings are for sale, and you can find them here.
Having seen other every day carry pictures and posts, I thought I'd empty my coat pockets and bag and reveal what lies within.
The folding craft knife takes a Stanley knife blade and will probably get me arrested if I'm ever spotted using it to sharpen a pencil on the open street in the UK.
The black Bic and the propelling pencil are my everyday drawing tools (biro on flimsy sketchbook pages, pencil on heavier paper). The Derwent eraser pen is the best thing since sliced bread. The HB pencil stub is a back up in case of technical difficulties with the propelling pencil.
The watercolour box came with 24 half pans. I took out 5 I never used, and looking at the 19 half pans left, only 10 are showing signs of wear. A point to consider if you're thinking of buying a watercolour box - fewer colours is generally better. There's a number 6 sable brush in the box. The pens and pencils in the bag are, of course, spares.
There's also a DSLR stuffed in the rucksack which gets daily use, for shots of potential subjects, reference for paintings, captures of finished works that are too big to fit on the scanner.
My favourite art critic just died. When I'm having a good painting day, I find myself commenting on what I'm doing in a poor imitation of his splendidly plummy voice.
It is ridiculous to think you could regret the loss of someone you never actually knew or were ever likely to meet, but he was one of a kind, and his death leaves a noticeable gap. We are a little poorer for his passing.
Here's a link to a YouTube upload of his Grand Tour series.
This is a series of paintings of some trees at the side of a cultivated field. I've done one a month for the past year or so, starting in March 2014 and deciding to paint a series in October of that year.
Actually, it feels a bit cheaty passing them off as a year's paintings. I might do three more so I've got one for every month in 2015.
What has painting a series taught me?
Foliage can last longer than you expect.
Things are beautiful all year round.
The sky is different every day. Different colour blue, different way it fills with light.
You never find the balance between mass and detail, but you get close enough.
Paint for too long and you're just second guessing yourself.
Colours change with the light in a heartbeat, but if you look long enough you see what repeats.
The smallest brush you use should be a little too big.
If your painting looks right at the viewing distance, don't worry about how it looks close to.
I found an essay online yesterday, which I've linked to here.
It's a very readable and informative look at the reasons behind the cultural shifts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which have had such a lasting effect on us, covering topics as diverse as art and politics, and the unlikely alliances and strange bedfellows which have shaped our times.
If you've ever wondered why modern art became incomprehensible, or why educational institutions have become hotbeds of gibbering idiocy, this essay will provide some much needed insight.
When I was a young student, towards the end of my time in college, I instinctively rejected what I was being taught. I stopped trying to paint like a New York abstractionist and started drawing from life. My small, ill considered rebellion had consequences which affect me to this day, but I never regretted it. I'm just glad to have found some of the reasons behind the forces that shape our cultural landscape.
Let this be a lesson to all you budding super villains out there. It's all very well building a secret lair, stealing nukes, or growing your own superbug...
Taking time out to have a good long look at what you've been doing is one of the most terrifying exercises known to man.
A week or so ago, I spent an hour looking at all the paintings I've done since I started painting again in 2012. Getting on for 120 pieces, mostly in oil on board, most around 10" x 12".
52 of them ended up in a box labelled 'Do not show'. Right next to the front room fireplace, where they're likely to end up as kindling. Oil paint on MDF - that should get a good blaze started.
60 ended up in the box of salvation, back upstairs in the spare bedroom, waiting on being framed and getting shown. The quality is patchy, but generally high. Most of the works were begun on site, painting plein air, but generally finished in the studio, whether that amounted to a little tidying up or extensive reworking.
Most of them are landscapes, though there have been two forays into self portraiture, one still life, and an Old Master copy that taught me a lot.
A dozen or so are repeated variations of the same landscape over the seasons, a series that will be finished come September.
I like to think I'm forging a tool, putting together the skills and knowledge needed to bring something new and worthwhile to landscape painting. From a cold start back in 2012, my drawing has picked up and my painting is workmanlike. On a good day, I think I know what I'm doing. On bad days I wonder who I'm kidding.
But then, walking that particular high wire, and refusing to let either over-confidence or ludicrous self-flagellation get in the way of what you're doing, is all part of painting. My next step is to enter some exhibitions this year and see if I get anywhere. If someone else decides my paintings are worth showing, maybe I can believe it too.
Well, it was pretty grey and cool to start with, but things perked up.
Painting plein air a couple of weeks ago, working on a study for a larger (12" x 16") version. There's a short list of open shows I'm going to try and get into this year, and the finished version of this is one of the pieces I'll be entering.
Still working on the problem of keeping a painting alive in the studio. I'm pursuing two threads: the nineteenth century academic method of doing studies for a composition, and pulling them all together into a grand pictorial statement, and the more agile and responsive Impressionist method of painting from life and keeping the marks and colours intact in the finished work.
I've got studies from last year waiting on the time being right to attempt full sized paintings from them, notably a house in Rowthorne, and a field on the way there. I passed by the house last week and noticed swarms of workmen going in and out. I just hope it's still standing when I go back in August. They trimmed the hedges and the ivy on the walls last year when I was halfway through the drawing.
Two lucky purchases this month, the first being a copy of 'Victorian Painters', by Jeremy Maas, which I picked up, literally for pennies, on Amazon. It's a brilliant overview of English painting in the nineteenth century. The second was a similarly priced copy of W.P.Frith's memoirs, with stories from the life of the successful academician. Given that he personally knew Turner and Constable, and that the book features stories about both men, I found it of particular interest.
...Is not a simple matter. Everything you choose to paint has to function as a design element, as a piece of a harmonious whole.
Some things are easy to incorporate in a composition. A house is a rectangle, a mountain is a triangle, a hill is a breast; all simple, pleasing forms. A mass of trees or a cloud share the happy facility of being pretty much any shape you choose.
But a horse has uncompromising facts of anatomy which must be accommodated without upsetting the balance of the picture. As a living thing, it will draw the eye no matter where you put it, even if it's only incidental to the main focal point of the painting.
And it is a collection of shapes: the truncated triangles of head, and neck, the sagging barrel of the body, and last, and most awkwardly, the legs. Many, many legs. Put those legs against a plain ground, like a grassy field, and they will divide it into beautiful, interesting paper cut outs, with nuanced straight lines, graceful curves, and odd little sharp angles. Which might be bad, because these shapes are too interesting, and could take attention away from where you want it to go.
One solution is to incorporate the horse into a tonal mass so that it doesn't stand out too much, blending into the background a little.
Paint the horses lying down, and you either have rounded boulders that fit in easily, or a sprawling mess with legs pointing everywhere. Painting is about as honest as stock photography, in that you're always looking for the best angle to show off your subject, and trying to avoid the awkward views.
