Mondaymonday : Saltwell Towers Garden

 

Saltwell Towers Garden

(markers in 21 x 26 cm sketchbook)

Because of the Lockdown, it's over a year since I was last out sketching with the Mondaymondaysketchers, so it was nice to return to Saltwell Park on Monday and meet up with them again. 

They'd settled down at a picnic table on the lawn opposite the Towers which didn't suit what I wanted to do, so after catching up, I wandered off to the little secluded garden by the side of the Towers. Taking a chance on seeing something interesting, I sat on a bench, opened my Saltwell Park Sketchbook, and looked around.

And this view caught my attention. It presented difficulties, in that I needed to find different marks for the various foliage - not something I'm well versed in - but I'm happy enough with what I achieved.

Pollard

Pollard

(Ink, Pentel Brush Pen and Posca Pen in 8x8 in sketchbook)

In March I spent six days in Belgium; first of all in Bruges, then in Leuven. They were both fascinating places to visit and I'd love to go there again. If only Brexit can be prevented from cutting us off completely from Europe. Or just prevented.

Being new to a place always makes it more likely that I'll spend the whole time there walking about, looking and photographing, rather than sketching. And so it was this time.

I'd love to go back, especially to Bruges, where I saw so much I'd want to draw. Oddly, rather than the buildings, the thing that stuck in my mind was the Flemish obsession with pollarding trees and I wish I'd taken more photographs of pollarding examples. I'd certainly make more of them were I able to do some drawing there.

Using one of only two photographs I took, I made this drawing today by quickly brushing in the shape with some ochre ink, then drawing over it with a Pentel Brush Pen. The cut ends of the branches were highlighted with a white Posca Pen.

Add One Blackbird

Thinking aloud again. Walking home from shopping yesterday, the thought of developing this drawing popped into my head:

A bit of Photoshopped colour, some trees from another painting of mine, and a blackbird from the inexhaustible Google Images cupboard and I have what I think may become a decent small painting (see above).

From Dillons' First Floor Window

From Dillons' First Floor Window
(Oil on board) Private Collection.

We went out to a Private View last night at a gallery new to me - the Bewicks Gallery Space in Gateshead Civic Centre. We'd been invited to a preview of work by Tom Bromly OBE, Dean of Newcastle Polytechnic (the forerunner of Northumbria University) Faculty of Art and Design until his retirement in 1992.

I liked the show very much, although I preferred his more designed/abstracted compositions to the straightforward studies and paintings of trees. I chatted to an old friend for a while and then, as we were taking a second glass of wine for a second turn around the gallery, someone came up to me and said:

"You're Harry Bell, aren't you? I bought a painting of yours a long time ago and I still love it!" We were joined by his wife who said "You're Harry Bell! You painted my favourite painting!"

The oil painting was From Dillons' First Floor Window and it was sold in 1995 from my first solo show. It was always a favourite of mine and here was the man who bought it twenty years ago, still enthusing about it now. 

Don't you just love it when that happens?

Getting Back to It

Fallen Tree (work in progress)

Actual work has suffered recently as repairs are being done to the house and I've continued to mull over ideas for painting. A few attempts at different ways of working, mainly on paper, have been inconclusive but some of what I achieved has, I think filtered through to my current oil paintings.

This one is an combination of a landscape and a fallen tree seen in Bishopdale last year, which I started late last night, working through until the small hours.. I'm pleased with how it's progressing, although I think I'll have to address the fact that right in the centre of the composition are two trees. Not a good idea to put things there.

Boating Again

Boat with Pines (work in progress)

This is a painting of a little boat moored near the marina at Trogir in Croatia. My plan today was to finish off the small painting I began last week, but before I did so, to start another so I'd have something to keep me going when the small one was done.

As sometimes happens, however, I got so absorbed in this new boat painting that I just keep going until it was time to go home. So now I'll have two to finish off next week

Rookery Time - Sunday 8th May (am)

Tree with Green Head (Brushpen, watercolour, A4 sketchbook)

It was becoming clear that the weather was going to be unstable, with sun and showers appearing from down the valley in unpredictable waves. I walked back up the hill towards the waterfalls but stopped part way there to draw this tree. It's another I'd become interested in last year but as we were here a couple of weeks later than last time, a crown of new leaves had shrouded the head of the shattered trunk.

Drawing this was particularly difficult. Sometimes you should make the decision to try something else and come back when the conditions are more favourable. Instead I pressed on, staring into the subject with the sun behind it and in my eyes, the watercolour drying as soon as I put it on the paper. My intention had been to lay down the watercolour and then draw into it with a disposable fountain pen, allowing the water soluble ink to spread into the colour. As it turned out, the ink had congealed and become a kind of black stringy glop, so I had to dispose of the disposable pen, and turn to the brush-pen.

When in Doubt, Draw a Tree

Trees, Kastel Gomilica (0.5 fibretip, A4 sketchbook)

There were a million and one things I might have drawn in our week in Croatia, but there never seemed to be time. I did promise myself that I'd get one drawing done in my sketchbook, however, so on the last full day there, Pat and I walked along the Kastela coast to Kastel Gomilica.

Kastel Gomilica is one of the last little towns we'd not walked to to previously and it certainly lives up to its guidebook reputation of being one of the most picturesque. It doesn't reward visitors with copious eating and drinking stops, however, so after feeling a little faint, we made a short detour up to the main road to find a baker's shop, bought a croissant for Pat and a börek for me, then walked back to the sea front to eat them.

Afterwards, I thought about drawing the old kastel (built by Benedictine nuns in 16th C) but I knew I didn't really have the time to do it justice, so, while Pat sat in the sun and watched two elderly men parade up and down the seafront dressed in nothing but rather small Speedos, I spent what time was available sitting in the shade drawing these two aged cypress trees.

Dales Diary - Monday 26 April

Tree Innards (0.5 Marker, 21 x 25 cm sketchbook)

High above The Rookery a limestone crag, or scar, runs along the top of the valley and in places is cut by waterfalls. Indeed, the whole of the valley is sliced by waterfalls of varying sizes and complexity. On Monday I set off up the path behind the house that leads to the nearest of the falls. There hadn't been much rain recently, so it certainly wasn't in full spate, but it was impressive and wide enough for me to not fancy trying to cross the rock pavement that lay where falls and path intersected.

As with most waterfalls, trees and shrubs clustered near the source of water and many of the trees there were old and gnarled from their struggle to find root space and from being battered by the wind. Because of their position, most were too awkward for me to draw, but this one, while it was impossible to open up my little folding stool, did allow me to stand in front of it and draw the convolutions of its bole. By the time I'd finished, my feet were numb and my fingers icy cold.

Oak Citadel

Oak Citadel (Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 ins)

I tried to post this yesterday, but I found I couldn't connect to Blogger all day. A little searching on Twitter showed that I wasn't alone in this, but that it wasn't universal. Odd.

I made an effort to get to the Art Club on Friday ... and found myself alone. Maybe it's due to the half-term holidays and all the regulars have been roped into grandfatherly duties. I suppose I could have gone home again, and the thought did cross my mind once or twice, but I felt that I needed the discipline of getting back into to some work. If I'd gone home, I might not have started on anything at all.

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.

Tree Sketches

Vivien Blackburn has come up with another challenge and as I'm unlikely to be able to post anything new in the coming week, I thought this was a suitable way of keeping at least some of you amused.

Vivien has asked for "sketches of trees done from life". Luckily trees (and rocks) tend to be the only thing I ever find to draw when I'm in the country, unless it's a bit of broken-down agricultural machinery. So here's a slideshow of various trees, stumps and branches, done over a period of some years, all from life

Auchterarder: 1st Day

Branches, White Moss Loch (4B pencil, watercolour, sketchbook)

We arrived at Shinafoot Studios around 4.30 on Friday night and after settling in, went out again looking for a good restaurant. Unfortunately, Auchterarder is something of a restaurant desert. we settled on an allegedly Italian place whose menu included only pizza and two other Italian dishes. My spaghetti all marinara was really well cooked, but I had to wait an age to find that out and overall the restaurant was uninspiring.

We came home up the windswept main street and paused for a moment to watch the local kids playing Toss the Dustbin Across the Road.

Today we split into two groups, one to check out the bridge at Kinkell, the other to walk up into the hills and find the quarry at Craig Rossie. I decided to follow on a little later (I'm really not an early morning person), taking the quarry route, but somewhere I took a wrong turning. Ending up on a long boring rock-strewn track, winding through freshly tilled and thus empty fields I emerged at a farm where all the domestic and farming detritus in the whole of Scotland had come to rest.

Or so I thought, but later I found that the rest of the area was a fly-tipper's paradise. There was a golf course and there were colossal prosperous-looking farms, and there were also car parts, Coke bottles, mattresses, sheets of corrugated iron, tractor tyres, car tyres, plastic bags, garden chairs, dead Xmas trees, in every ditch and hedgerow. The good folks of Perthshire should be desperately ashamed of themselves.

I came to White Moss Loch which boasted many water birds, although I could see few of them from the track that skirted part of the lake, but allowed access only by climbing over a pile of plastic tubing (various sizes) and ended at a breeze-block and corrugated asbestos building which had been bulldozed then allowed to crumble into the landscape.

I did this drawing while randy mallards chased one another round the lake and a swan came by looking for sandwiches, but I had none for him.

Short Stay Among the Oaks

Trees at Sawrey (work in progress)

I was hoping to get a lot done in two days at the Club this week, but I wasn't counting on being asked for advice on a painting, nor on the building being closed tomorrow for Good Friday. I'm afraid I lose track of public holidays now that my life doesn't depend on being given time off by the Man.

And I must emphasise that I don't by any means resent being asked for advice. Thinking about other people's paintings can be really helpful in formulating your own ideas of what is right and what not so right, and putting them into words.

Still, it means I made slow progress on the Trees today. I've removed some of the surplus marks from the grassy planes, which I do think helps to keep the eye in the essential areas of wall, rocks and trees. I'll just have to wait until next week to do more.

Meanwhile, since I won't be at the Club tomorrow, it'll be back to the trams.

Contained

Tree in rock, Blawearie (Charcoal and pastel, cartridge paper)

This tree had struggled up through a crack in the rock in the garden at Blawearie, a place I've written about before. It seems to exemplify the qualities of the new Illustration Friday subject, Contained, while suggesting there is always a way out.

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?

The Oak Citadel

Oak Citadel (Charcoal, charcoal and coloured Conte on A3 cartridge)

It's been my intention for some time to try to work on drawings outside which are bigger than sketchbook size. Oddly enough, although I've done it in the less agreeable surroundings of Newcastle, I've never really attempted it in the countryside.

This time I went prepared. I had with me a Mapac bag containing an A3 pad of Winsor & Newton Medium Surface cartridge paper and all manner of drawing stuff - charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencils, pastels and coloured Conte. And a new can of fixative. The fixative is really important to my working method. I spray as often as is necessary, rubbing down elements of the current drawing and spraying again, until there develops a crystalline tooth to the drawing.

Despite my preparedness, I still didn't achieve what I set out to do. Mainly because I hadn't prepared myself for something outside my control - the wind. The thing about little pieces of charcoal, Conte sticks and the packs they come in, is that they're very light. So a great deal of my time was taken up with rushing about retrieving materials and generally cursing the elements.

I know it's a poor workman who blames his tools, but I also found that my choice of medium surface cartridge was a mistake - I really don't like the rather mechanical tooth it's been prepared with. Maybe the other side would have been better for my purposes, but smooth would have been best of all.

Anyway, after a considerable time cursing and grunting, a black cloud came and threatened me and I was forced to give up. So the drawing as it stands lacks a certain definition in the trees. The trunks don't seem to have sufficient body and even the rocks are a little anaemic. I do like the way the shadows of the branches are cast over the rock face, however: something I would find difficult to invent because even standing in front of them, I couldn't figure out which branch was casting which shadow.

I may return to it in the studio when the time is right.

Trees & Water

Trees & Water - 1st stage

As part of an attempt to revitalise the Art Club and generate greater membership involvement in the wake of The Secretary Fiasco, there's now an on-going themed competition at the Club.

Last month we were invited to put up a still-life painting and members were encouraged to vote on the "best". I think there was a bottle of wine involved, not least in several of the entries. I didn't bother putting anything on the wall, but this month the subject chosen is "Trees and Water."

I wanted to see if I could get anything out of the many photographs I took on the recent trip to The Lakes and an off-cut piece of MDF winked at me and flaunted its interesting shape (it's actually a double square). So here's today's beginning. Inevitably, I find the greens worrying, but overall I'm quite pleased with the way it's going.

More work, especially on the trees, tomorrow.

Down in the Valley

I wonder if it's possible to write and paint? For me, I mean. I'm fully aware that there are painters who write. And there are writers who paint. There are even painters who write on their paintings. But it seems that the only time I'm visited by the writing muse is when I'm stuck with my painting.

Or when I'm in something of a depression.

Which tends to be the same thing.

I went for a walk on the Valley yesterday. As a kid, I used to love the Valley. I'd cycle there with my buddies and we'd play all day in the woods, drinking Tizer and making useless clay lamps out of the mud we'd dig up from the river bank. I don't think you can get at the river now; it's been culverted in. And there's not much left of the woods either. Cut down to make room for more offices and factory units. But that's OK really; it's what the Valley is for, and if it makes for more jobs, then who am I to complain?

I still like walking on the Valley, though. Despite there being fewer areas of woodland, there are still open fields and every Avenue is filled with trees and bushes. These are usually kept trimmed a bit, but still spill out onto the pavements. And curiously, it's pretty quiet.

A dual carriageway runs down the middle and this is always full of cars, lorries and buses rushing about their business, but the other Avenues are generally rather quiet. I suppose because everyone's at work. Except me, the lone pedestrian.

So it's a little like walking in countryside which has been invaded by the city. Or in a city which has been invaded by the countryside. I guess it's one of those curious non-places that modern civilisation tends to produce, such as airports and shopping malls, but this one is much nicer than those.

The Valley teems with wildlife. Every bush twitters with sparrows and there are innumerable blackbirds flitting silently from tree to tree, or shrieking at everyone and everything. Earlier this year (or maybe it was late last year - pleasant memories seem to flow together now into a sun-filled whole) Patsy123 and I walked on the Valley and saw a family of rabbits sitting about in the late rays of a setting sun. As we approached, they scampered off to the safety of a huge clump of overgrown shrubs by the side of their field.

But why was I on the Valley yesterday? It was a fairly miserable day, grey and misty with occasional showers, and I was somewhat grey and miserable myself. I'd decided to go there to see what Borders might have in stock (did I mention that, in addition to offices and factory units, there's also a Retail Park?) My curiosity had been piqued by mention in a recent blog of a book by Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now. I thought it might prove interesting and/or useful.

In the event, I found I wasn't in the mood for the Tolle book, but I spent some time leafing through some other self-help books. Nowhere near as much time as the guy who slid a big illustrated copy of The Karma Sutra off the shelf and sat himself down at a table in the corner with it. He was still there when I left, slowly turning the pages. I'd like to think his wife or girlfriend might be in for a good time later that night, but somehow I doubt it.

Mostly I was fascinated by books about organisational strategies and time management which seemed to suggest a way out of my present malaise, but in the end I didn't buy anything. Maybe I'll go look again. Or maybe I'll just shake myself up and get on with things.

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.