Month: December 2016

Bosham Harbour and Church: the finished painting

/ davidrpharmer / 10 Comments

bosham-harbour-finished-painting

The finished painting finally!

There wasn’t too much to do since the last post. The boats had to be detailed and their reflections put in.

The boat in the foreground had a dark blue spinnaker tightly wrapped, which is probably the wrong word. I am not a sailor, and although I enjoy painting them, I am not up in boating terminology. The next nearest boat, had a spinnaker in orange and red which was highly convenient for the colour composition. I used a red buoy, and the reefed sail was also red. Again apologies to sailors if I have that term wrong. The furthest boat almost did itself really

So there it is. After the commissioned painting of Bosham worked out so well, I really wanted one myself for the March exhibition. This one, I think, will frame up well. Incidentally this is one of those occasions when the jpeg does not do justice to the original, which is softer somehow.

I have been looking at my list for the exhibition, for which I want fourteen framed pictures in all. I need to repaint the Notre Dame with Pigeons picture in a different mood, probably in bright sunshine and also missing out that dreadful marquee, which will make it look more attractive to people

One of my existing local pictures needs to be reframed, and there is also a painting I want to do of Sicily which I hope will turn out well. With what I have already, I could put fourteen pictures into the field, without doing more

Not that I will stop, of course, because I never do, and anyway there are other exhibitions coming up throughout the year, so still much to do. Inevitably if I have something better, I will change the entries for the March exhibition too

Hopefully in the coming weeks I will be talking about more work as I complete it

Bosham Harbour: continue with the painting

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bosham-harbour-continued

It seems a long time ago that I touched this painting, and in fact it is the best part of a month, which for me, in between stages this is too long. I have totally lost the thread of what I had planned for this picture, so I shall have to rethink it

We went to Germany for the markets, where I became ill with some virulent chest infection, and then celebrated a family Christmas over three days. Now different branches of the family have flown off to Spain and to Thailand, and so peace descends.After a morning sorting a few things out, I started to look at my easel again, and with confidence surprisingly ebbed away, I picked up my brushes and started to get my mind round the picture and how to tackle it.

If you remember the first post that I did on this painting, you will see that I have added the reflections of the quayside houses and the Saxon church. It may not look much for an afternoon’s work, but that is what it took me

I find with reflections that I do an awful lot of zooming in and out again. That is, I paint a bit and then go to the door and look back. I don’t do a mirror-image reflection, I never do. Some people do and do it well. I like a reflection to look as though it is on water, and not on glass. In other words, it has to wobble a bit, and the colours don’t reach the same intensity as the buildings themselves. But that is me!

I altered some of the houses and gave them a white facade. They were a bit too gloomy, and no distinction between any of them. There were also some flagpoles and masts of boats outside the yacht club to be added.

I am generally happy with the reflections. I think they look like reflections, although one or two need tidying up

The other thing I did was to put shadows into the boats. That has to harden and then I can start on detailing them which will be a long job. I still have to decide on colours. Red for one of the reefed sails and also the spinaker, as that will make a nice reflection. The others to be decided

Decisions, decisions!

Monschau in the Eifel Mountains, Germany

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monschau-in-the-eifel-mountains

The very pretty and old village of Monschau on the river Rur ( without an h). Very cold in the valley but nice where the sun caught. We were expecting to find a Christmas market open that day, but it wasn’t. The village itself was very attractive though, high in the Eifel Mountains, an area of Germany I hadn’t visited before. Very sparkly at this time of year, with the sun on the frost.In fairness I should say that some shops were open, and they were of a high standard, so our visit there was generally enjoyable

I took a lot of reference pictures whilst I was there. The lights and darks were good and the tumbledown buildings would be fun to draw. I haven’t painted German villages before and maybe I will. I tend to paint places that people buy at exhibition, which perhaps is wrong as nothing worse than a bored artist.

In all, our trip to the Christmas markets was not successful. Monschau was lovely, but the Christmas markets in Liege, Belgium the following day were poor, and even in Bruges on the way home, a city so beautiful normally, the markets were disappointing.

But what really marred the trip, apart from the disgusting food in our hotel, was the fact that we both became ill partway through the holiday, and towards the end all we wanted was home. I have no doubt that this jaundiced our view of the trip

I found, when I went to my own doctor,( and at my wife’s insistence), that I had developed bronchitis, so no wonder I had difficulty breathing! Thank heavens for penicillin, and now partway through my course, I am feeling much better, and interested enough to write my blog, which I have neglected.

I have done no more on Bosham Harbour sadly, not having had the will to take up a brush, but now I am looking forward to getting started again

One little ray of sunshine to brighten my gloom this week, was to hear that my charity card, Christmas Shopping in Guildford High Street, which is described somewhere in the archive of this blog, actually sold out. That was 250 packs of ten, so very pleased at that. That in addition to the original painting which I donated as well, which they sold for £150, so delighted about that too

I hope to get back to normal soon

Bosham Harbour: the painting started

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bosham-harbour-interim

Some while ago now I finished the drawing of Bosham Harbour and Church, and I posted that. I left it, as I completely messed up the initial wash. It wasn’t something I could correct, so I abandoned the whole thing. Very,very rarely do I do that, but sometimes it is the only way.

I find in situations like that, that walking way is the best thing to do.  Walk round the block, metaphorically speaking and then come back, otherwise you just get more and more frustrated, and make more and more mistakes

My way of walking round the block, was to do the Conkers painting. Completely different and completely unimportant, I was able to unwind and get myself back into finding the colour recipe for conkers which was in my head somewhere. After all that, my little bit of therapy produced a quite usable painting, and I framed it not so long ago, and was pleased with the result. This will go towards my next exhibition which will be in the Guildford Institute in March, not that far away now, so I need to work.

Back to Bosham Harbour, after redrawing the village with sailing boats, I put in a different wash, and played safe. I have no time to experiment. Phthalo blue and Cobalt produce a nice sky/sea colour and across the horizon a band of sunset produced with permanent Rose and Cadmium Orange. I started the blue wash downwards whilst at the same time starting the sunset colour at horizon level and worked upwards so the two met, and blended comfortably. Tricky using two brushes and two palettes at the same time, but it seemed to work

As you can see, I have just been detailing the church and other buildings in various reds and browns. I needed to get those roof tops really bright, and after several different glazes used cadmium red to give them some zing, so that they looked as though bright red evening sun was bouncing off them.

Still a lot of work to do, on reflections and those boats, but that is to come