Farm in Langdale

Farm in Langdale (Oil on board, 16 x 16 in) SOLD

I spent last weekend in Lincoln with a group of friends. Much fun was had and a great deal of walking done. I also came back with at least one idea for a new painting. Now all I have to do is ...well, paint it.

Later in the week came this unexpected sale. This painting, done a few years ago, marked the beginning of a determined attempt to get into painting the landscape rather than the city. I still don't feel I can call myself a landscape painter, but I'm on the way.

Landscape Nr Sawrey

Landscape Nr Sawrey (Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cms)

Friends tell me my posts have been sounding very gloomy and in retrospect, I guess they're right. I apologise, even though there are really quite good reasons for their being so. What will make them change without an effort of will on my part, will be an increase in sunshine and an acceleration in the rate of completed work.

Sunshine is outwith my control, of course, but the last couple of days have been quite mild and sunny, so there's hope there. But what I really can have some effect on is the work. Back at the Club, I pressed on with this landscape and finished it. I had some trouble with the forest in the background and opted for a slightly stylised approach which interests me as a possible future avenue of enquiry.

Seeing the Wood for the Trees

Sawrey Farm (work in progress)

Back to the Club today where I was hailed as some kind of hero for my page in Artists & Illustrators. This was, of course, deeply embarrassing and I busied myself with painting out the background trees from the Sawrey Farm picture.

I think this is a big improvement and leaves the painting almost complete. A bit more work on the upper parts of the trees and I may make the sky a little more complex in colour (without destroying the overall flattish quality, I hope).

Easels and Trees

Sawrey Farm (work in progress)

I took the Sawrey Farm painting to the Club today. It was fairly quiet by the time I got there, but I couldn't help noticing a dismaying number of easels left for someone else to put away. Lot of new members, not enough explanation of studio etiquette perhaps, but who do they think is going to tidy the place up?

I've moved the painting along well, I think, but the trees in the background, which I included for what I thought were perfectly well-justified reasons are troubling me. I'll try losing them next week and see how I feel about it then.

Rocks Nr Sawrey

Rocks Nr Sawrey (Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cms)

Thank heavens for the Art Club. On Thursday I found myself with a burning desire to finish off the rock study. I knew there was little to do, so I made a short visit to the Club and put in the branches, did a little glazing with some sap green, signed off on it and came home satisfied.

For most of the time I was on my own, as the boiler in the building has broken down completely and the old gadgies at the Club are feeling the chill. But there are electric heaters and it certainly felt warmer than the studios when I was at University. I'd taken along one of the Brighton cafe pictures, but realised that I need some very small brushes to finish that off. Something for next time.

Oaks Nr Sawrey

Oaks Nr Sawrey (Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 ins)

Back at the Club again on Friday and good to get back into painting. It's a companion piece to Oak Citadel, which I've posted here previously. I'm really happy with the way these have turned out and am beginning to think about some further additions to this non-urban subject matter.

Now where was I?

Oak Citadel (work in progress)

It seems such a long while since I spent any time at the Club and today proved to be not the best day to pick up where I'd left off, at least in terms of finding out what everyone had been up to.

Maybe they're all on holiday, or perhaps it was just too hot in the studio. I learned last time that although the skylight windows open, they can't be closed again. So, of course, they never get opened and we have to rely on keeping the fire exit door open and switching on the fans. Boy, does it get hot in there!

After a while the heat evidently got too much for those who were there and I was left on my own. Enforced solitude is good for getting things done, however, so I made good progress with this new painting, based on a drawing I made in Sawrey two years ago. It'll make a companion for the other painting of the same stand of oaks I was working on in April. They should both come to completion together now.

Woodman, Spare that Axe

Trees at Sawrey (work in progress)

I wasn't sure that I'd be able to work over this much today, because the paint was wet, but I've found that using quite thick paint on the brush, mixed with a good bit of Liquin, allows me to slide the paint over the lower layers, without too much mixing of the layers.

The crimson passages were too insistent, I found, and most of them have been taken down with oranges and browns. One or two remain, mainly on the tree trunks, and I'll see what I want to do with them next week.

I hadn't decided yesterday whether I wanted to include the fence posts, but at the last minute I put them in today. I think it was the right decision - they help to lead into the picture and provide a counter-rhythm to the trees on the right.

This being a slight departure for me in terms of subject matter and treatment, I asked Pat what she thought when she called into the Club at the end of the day. She liked it from a distance, but thought it might be too busy close to. Maybe she's right; I'll have to think about it. I suppose I could reduce the number of facets and planes into greater flat areas of paint.

I know it's difficult for you to see it from a distance and close to, but what do you think?

Can't see the wood for the trees

Trees at Sawrey (work in progress)

Part of my current malaise, I think, is due to a general dissatisfaction with what I'm doing. Or at least, a failure to perceive the direction it's actually going in. It's not so much that I don't like what I've been doing -- I do, and will be happy to show it anywhere -- but that I'm unsure what it is that I like about it and how I should build on that.

I decided to get myself to the Club today, but didn't feel like working on the two pictures I have there, so took along an old 24 inch canvas I knew was never going to amount to anything. Over the old painting I started this one of some trees I found at Sawrey last year. It was fun working over the very textured old paint layers, and I let myself go with a vermilion red as a substitute for the greens that should have been there. However, I think I'm going to have to tame the colours somewhat - I'm working out of my comfort zone here and will need to curb the exuberance before I'll be satisfied with it.

Farm in Langdale

Farm in Langdale (Oil on board, 16 x 16 ins.) S0LD

The Art Club's annual exhibition opens on Thursday, with the Preview tomorrow night. I wasn't sure what to put in, but this one which I worked on some time ago, fitted a frame. So this is my entry, after a little tweaking. The photograph is misleading, however, in that the blue shadow areas of the farm were made with Payne's grey and underpainting white, so are nowhere near as blue as they appear here.

If you're in the area, drop into the show at The Guildhall on Newcastle's Quayside. It runs until 28th December.

Fallen Tree

Fallen Tree (Oil on board, 12 x 12 ins)

Shortly before going on the most recent Compo & Clegg Painting Week in the Lakes, I thought I'd get some practice in on the subject matter I usually find there, so I started this painting at the Art Club. As reference material I had a black and white photocopy of an old photograph and I began the painting on an old painting of a Cyprus landscape.

I didn't quite finish it before we left for the Lakes so I brought it home, but since then I haven't had the time or inclination to complete it.

This morning, I made the time and finished off the foreground, retaining some of the orange from the Cyprus landscape. I'm pleased with this, especially as I had no colour notes to remind me of how it looked. I guess enough looking at trees and rocks pays off eventually?

Compo & Clegg Week 2008

Tree & Rock (A4 sketchbook, pencil, Inktense pencils)

You have to play the cards Fate deals you. As I sit here typing in a hot room, the sun streaming down outside, I ponder on events which led us to book last week in the Lake District, rather than this one. Because, of course, last week was your classic Lake District week, all rain, sun and showers.

But it doesn't pay to ponder too long. We booked the week we did, and we played the cards we were dealt. So we ended up having a good week, although the work we produced was limited by the weather.

The drawing above was my first attempt at getting to grips with what seems to be becoming something of an obsession when I go out into the country - trees and rocks. I'm not all that convinced by it, but there are things about it that I like. I still don't find the Inktense pencils particularly good to work with, but no doubt I'll return to them at some time in the future.

The tree growing out of a cleft in the rock was at the side of a lane running up past a farm in Near Sawrey towards a tarn at Moss Eccles. It continued to exert a fascination for a few days and when I found the weather too bad to go out and work, I had a go at working from the first sketch and from memory on something more colourful.



Tree & Rock (12 x 8 ins, watercolour paper, mixed media)


I started out with a pencil and watercolour pencil drawing, then added gouache because it wasn't working right . After that, I guess it just developed a life of its own. I worked over it with coloured Conte and some pastel, rubbing it down now and then with an eraser and frequently spraying with fixative.

I rather like the end product, although it does seem a little strange. But then I've never been averse to the strange.






Tree in Rock Cleft (A4 sketchbook, brush pen)

I ended my engagement with the tree in the rocky cleft by moving round to the opposite side and doing this drawing in Pentel brush-pen. As I usually find with black markers of whatever kind, I ended up rounding off the forms - a remnant of my cartoon days, I think.

At the bottom of the valley from our cottage lay Esthwaite Water, and in a field by the side of the road running down to the lake I came across a massive rock outcrop on top of which were several old and gnarled oaks, their roots bursting through the seams of rock.

Oak & Rocks (Sketchbook, 8 x 9.5 ins, 4B pencil)





I liked these rocks. They had great presence and genuinely interesting fissures running in parallel lines through them. The oaks sat on top, feeding their roots down through the fissures and splitting off great slabs. And one old oak, over the years, is clearly edging his way off his pedestal towards the road. Beware.









The Oak Steps Down (Sketchbook, 8 x 9.5 ins., 2B mechanical pencil)

Oil Strike in Lake District

I was just gearing up for our annual painting week in the Lake District, when news reached me of a disaster in our rented holiday house.

Last week a tanker brought the regular delivery of oil for heating. No problem there, you might think. All the tanker driver has to do is pump the consignment of oil into the house's tank. Fine. Except that what he did was pump two tanks-worth of oil into the one tank. The garden is full of oil. The basement is full of oil. The house is effectively out of commission for months to come.

So it's goodbye to Little Langdale for this year, at least.

Some desperate re-booking has found us another property, but in the Hawkshead area. Not as quiet and secluded as Little Langdale, perhaps, but the website makes the house and surroundings look good.

I feel the first stirrings of excitement, coupled with the usual sense of anxiety over what materials to take. I expect it'll be mostly drawing materials, but I gather I may have more room in the car this year, so a range of gear might be accommodated (to cope with the expected range of weather).

This Week

It's been a busy week. A meeting of the Figure 8 painters' group on Tuesday was helpful. We have a lot of planning to do for our 4 (possibly 5) exhibitions next year and I think we're all conscious of how time can be frittered away until - suddenly - the show is on top of you.

When Newcastle University's Fine Art Degree Show opened at the beginning of the month, I had time only to look at the work in The Hatton Gallery and a few of the First Year Studios. Meeting up with The Frootbat on Wednesday, I got the opportunity to see most of the rest of the Show, although some of it had been taken down. I'm pleased to be able to say that, overall, the work was immeasurably better presented than in the last few years and, from a personal point of view, I was delighted to see the re-emergence of painting as a favoured discipline. Clearly the departure of the egregious Uriah Heep from her post of Head of the Painting School has been like a breath of fresh air.

Back at the Art Club on Thursday, I made some headway with the painting of the Metro Station in South Shields.


Metro (work in progress)

I'm still trying to convince myself about the tree. It started life as leafless and looked terrible. When it came into leaf, the awful greeny-ness of it fought like hell with the red, blue and yellow. Now that it's been re-clothed in rather browny-green leaves, including quite a bit of cadmium red in the mixture, I think it works better. But I want to look again at some real trees, instead of the ones growing in my head.

Having a little time to spare before I left the Club, I thought I'd have a go at one of the views I brought back from the Lakes. I'm experimenting with a palette knife at the moment, so most of this was done with one, the paint thickened up somewhat with Matt Spectragel.

It's OK; better perhaps than I expected it to be, but more work will be needed and I suspect I'll do that with a brush.


Lakeland Farm (first impression)

Back from Little Langdale

Slaters Bridge (4B pencil, sketchbook)

This is the first drawing I made, in the first flush of enthusiasm for Little Langdale. My enthusiasm for the place never waned (indeed we've already made a provisional booking for next year), but as is often the case, I found it increasingly difficult to find things in the countryside I wanted to deal with.

Nevertheless, Slaters Bridge did get me back to draw one end of it.

Slaters Bridge (end) (Pentel Brushpen & watercolour, sketchbook)

And as always, there were collapsed and rotting trees everywhere.

Tree Form (Pilot disposable fountain pen, sketchbook)

Given that the weather was outstandingly good, with temperatures up to 21C each day and clear blue skies, I found myself wanting to walk more than in previous years. My planta fasciitis seems to have improved, leaving only a little numbness in my big toes, and it was a joy to get out on the fells; unencumbered by heavy weather-proof clothing, the walks reminded me of past holidays walking in Crete and France.

The food was especially good this year. The Three Shires Inn was only 100 yards away and served us well with steak & ale pie, game pie, Cumberland sausage studded with black pudding, and pints of Hawkshead Red and Coniston Old Man. In between, the Mad Doctor made his chilli and his flapjacks, Tall Tony his five spice chicken and I my chicken curry. Plastic Man just ate it all and entertained us with his illiberal remarks. And Raymondo? Well, he's from Sunderland.

Every year these trips seem to involve one or more detours to art suppliers to see what might tempt us to part with money. This year I bought a bottle of Indian ink, because I remembered I had a dip pen with me, but never got round to using it. Last year, I bought a tin of Derwent Inktense Pencils and didn't use them, but as I'd brought them along this time, I thought I'd give them a go.

Finding myself on one of many wrong paths, I stopped for a while to draw these rocks and decided to add some colour with the Inktense Pencils. I think the drawing was probably better before I added the colour, but you have to make mistakes to learn.

Rocks by The Dubs (6B pencil, Inktense Pencils, sketchbook)

The pencils are interesting, despite their limited success this time, because once you've added water to them they become insoluble. You could then work over them with other media, like pastel or oil pastel, which could be worth investigating in the future.

I put this on the Things To Do mental pile.

Shutters down on Boogie Street

I'm closing up Stately Zip Mansion for the next week and heading off to The Lakes. It's time for another Compo & Clegg Painting Week, this time somewhere in Langdale.

Seven days of drawing, painting, arsing about and exploring the insides of country taverns. I'll try not to be bored.

I suggest you do the same.

The Lakes

Grasmere Tree (sketchbook, fibre tip)

I just got back from a week in the Lakes. Every year at about this time, I go painting with Compo & Clegg and the rest, but the last three trips to the South-West of Scotland have been Ordeals of Bad Weather. This time we thought we'd give the Lakes a go. I know, the Lake District and rain are not generally regarded as mutually exclusive, but we thought we'd chance it anyway.

As it turned out, we hit lucky. Apart from an overnight bout of rain, and a shower or two the following morning, we had terrific weather. But there were, unfortunately, some desperately cold winds blowing off the lakes themselves, which somewhat restricted the kind of work we might have got done otherwise. I limited myself to drawing a few rotted and blasted trees. One of them (see above) I was rather pleased with, even if it harks back more to my illustration days.
I suspect that next year we'll not return to the Lakes. Walking the hills is always an attraction there, and a distraction from the primary purpose of the trip.