Seascapes

Painting again as means to recovery — finished painting of Bosham Church viewed from the sailing club

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Bosham Church from the sailing club

It is now some time since I have posted anything, and it is good to be back. It is also extremely good to be painting again. My life for the past ten weeks, has centred round hospital visits and more recently consultations with the physiotherapist. Today I was discharged from hospital so trying to get back to normal after my accident

I started this painting about two weeks ago. It was to replace a gap in my range. I sold two Bosham paintings at my last exhibition in June, which was held in the gallery at Denbies Wine Estate near Dorking. I had a telephone call from a gentleman asking if by chance I had a painting available of Bosham which he wanted as a gift for a friend.. How fortunate. He was prepared to wait and is collecting the finished item tomorrow, so that is good

I have used sunset colours which always work with any subject involving water. The deep reflections are perfect for this size of painting. There are just four colours in the picture, red and cobalt blue, violet and transparent brown

There are more finished paintings to come. Roman Sunrise, which is a splendid early morning view of St Peter’s Basilica, and also the Bridges of Prague, which I am just finishing

Two exhibitions in December coming up so will need plenty. Fingers crossed that strict Covid restrictions aren’t reintroduced of course as they were last year at the last minute. Our infection rate is rising worryingly, with the government trying to avoid taking any action. It is as though they are taking some desperate gamble that herd immunity will kick in which will save them putting any curbs on the economy

Anyway sorry about my long absence. Hopefully I can get back into the swing again.

Bosham Harbour: along the Causeway

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Bosham Harbour from the Causeway

I am starting another painting of Bosham, this time from a different angle. This started because I want something to use in one of those long frames I bought. Bosham has worked well in the past but I can’t repeating that same shot, so this time I am standing on the causeway which floods at high tide and which gives good possibilities for an interesting composition

So far I have drawn the cottages on the water’s edge and the church behind. I am not sure whether you can make that out and will include a close up at the end

What is that splash of yellow? Something I haven’t tried before. I have laid down the basis of a low sun across the water. The plan is to wash over that with the sky and sea colour. I may well live to regret doing that, but sometimes you have to try something a little different.

I shall wash over with a mix of blue and vermillion, and hopefully get a low lit subject. We shall see.I will leave the close up of the drawing

I hope that is a bit clearer. The wall on the corner is foreground. The posts mark the edge of the road which will be flooded in this picture

The Original before cutting down

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The Original Sea Gazers

The comment was made, quite fairly, that I didn’t include the original painting, before it was reduced.

This is it. As I said, I felt the eye ran off the page to the right, and was possibly rather boring anyway. By removing the right hand side, I effectively made more of a central group with the figures and the distant headland.

I found the breakers rather strange here, as they rolled in, roughly the same size each time, so rather monotonous, really

Please feel free to comment, should you want to. Your opinions are important to me

Cutting Down an Old Painting

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Sea Gazers in Nice

Sometimes a painting creates no interest whatsoever, even though I might have been pleased with it at the time. Occasionally, and only when I think appropriate, I remove a section of the painting, which perhaps detracts from the overall composition, and reduce the image to a smaller painting. Hopefully an improvement.

So it was with this picture, Sea Gazers in Nice. We were in Nice for New Year, a few years ago. The weather was mild compared with the rest of Europe, which was deep-frozen. We walked along the famous Promenade des Anglais, and watched the sea and watched people watching the sea. This couple were alone with their thoughts and almost mesmerised by the breakers rolling in.

They kindly kept motionless, unaware of me sketching them and taking photographs. Not often that sitters are so obliging. I did the painting some years later, but then I included a long expanse of sea and breakers to the right of the couple. It was a mistake, looking back, as the eye of the viewer went right off the page.

I showed the painting a few times, but it impressed no-one. I prefer this version, so will see if others do

I have used this method only a few times. Occasionally only a central detail from a larger painting, seems to work. The last time I rescued a painting in that way, was to cut a small scene about the size of a postcard, and this worked on its own. The rest wasn’t worth keeping. The reduced painting, of the London Embankment, with a small section of London Eye, I sold, so that was worth doing.

We’ll see what happens to Sea Gazers!

Langstone Mill Drawing Stage

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Langstone Mill Drawing

This will be rather faint, I’m afraid, as I only want faint guidelines before applying any colour

Two posts which mark the depth, and painted red and white like barber’s poles I have masked out. Also the flag pole which is white and the flag, both have been masked out for now. To the right of the drawing, which couldn’t be included are three small boats. They are near the horizon line, with one side in light and the other in shadow.

I am going to use pink as a background sky, moving in to a blue grey across the buildings and then pink again across the water. I need the background to look misty ideally, so not too deep in colour but not so pale that everything looks white still.

When that is good and hard I shall work on some of the details. I usually put the shadows in first, which I will do with more of the blue-grey, and that will give the picture some structure, on which to build. Likewise background trees in the grey behind the rooftops. The colour of these I haven’t quite decided, but they need some sort of red in them

I will need to check the sea-level so that it doesn’t look wrong against the buildings.

If I can do that and make sure that the shading is right around the pillars under the mill store, then I might have the basis of a decent painting

We shall see

A different aspect of Bosham Harbour

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i think I may have mentioned ad nauseam that Bosham Harbour with its ancient church is a favourite subject for painting, and is widely known

If I am preparing for an exhibition, I usually like to have at least one view of this beautiful little place. The problem is that everyone wants the same shot, across the harbour with the church against the skyline, so painters, like me, are continually looking for a way to paint this view, and yet make it look different every time.

I came across the attached photograph a few months ago, which interested me. As you can see, it is a gentle evening shot, with some bright sky and some very deep silhouettes. The details are blurred, which is not something I usually do, but found myself intrigued nonetheless. The effect could be impressionistic, which again is not something I usually do. The other thing I liked, is that, when translating this into a painting, one could use a very limited pallette, which I find improves the effect very often. In this case, we are looking at yellow and violet basically, which generally work together very well.

I haven’t used these two colours for a while, so the idea is attractive

I am not sure about how I feel about the beached boats in the immediate foreground. They are certainly an aid to perspective, which I can appreciate, and yet in your face just a bit. I think I will draw some of these separately on tracing paper and chase them round the composition to see what I like best. I have been through my archives of boats too, and have sketched one or two of those, again to see what works.

Despite what I said about getting away from detail for a change, I don’t want meaningless shapes either, and unlike photographers, artists can choose what goes into a composition, which gives us an advantage, so I might be able to get away from that rather shapeless foreground.

I think there will be quite a lot of work with little bits of tracing paper, before we hit on the right composition, so we will see what happens. Yet another journey into the unknown.

Fishing Boats at Beer in Devon

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Fishing boats

Years ago we went to the delightful little fishing village of Beer on the south Devon coast. These colourful boats were drawn up in a line on the beach, and I photographed them in several frames, as I have shown here

I painted them once and showed them. That painting sold. A year or two later, someone picked the painting out from the web site, and commissioned something like, so I painted something similar but not the same

At a craft fair recently I bought the frame in the photograph. The beading is Italian, heavily distressed and in a driftwood finish. The mount is split into four spaces, and is obviously intended for photographs.

It reminded me of something I had seen not long ago at an exhibition. An artist had used a frame like this using a long painting, which looked very effective, I thought. It obviously needs a long horizontal subject, which reminded me of the line of boats at Beer, so I am going to try it out. It may not work, as the spacing of the boats may be wrong, but I will try it anyway

If it turns out well, this could be my twelfth and last painting for the July exhibition, so we shall see

Zoom in

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

Few days in Spain

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Just back from a few days in Sitges, not far from Barcelona. We hadn’t been there before so something of a treat. Still cold at night but during the day an agreeable 17-19 compared with our British 6 at the moment. There is nothing like winter sunshine to revive the spirit

As you can see from one of my pictures, all the ingredients for some really good paintings are there. Mediterranean sky, active sea, old churches, strong light, deep shadows with figure drawing thrown in. Some interesting side streets with iron window grilles and some strong colours should make for interesting material to work from.

I have just saved about 50 pictures so should get 2 or 3 at least, worthwhile compositions out of that lot. My next exhibition “Watercolour Wanderings” looms large. That starts on May 3rd and takes place at the Guildford Institute. That sounds a long way off but in painting terms is very close, and certainly Sitges needs to be part of my “wanderings”

Time to get started

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