Loosely Painted Landscape

Decided to paint today. Started late – only a couple of hours of daylight left – so thought I would just get on with it. In fact something told me that today was going to be a different sort of painting day. So I got the easel out, some paints and brushes, then filled some jars with water.

Square canvas. As for subject: I hadn’t really thought about it. I have a selection of photos and sketches of landscapes which I take regularly when out walking or cycling – mostly fields, low hills and riverside scenes in late winter. In the end I just picked one of them at random and worked straight from it.

To start with I drew a few loose lines across the canvas in charcoal to mark out rough boundaries, but could already notice myself thinking too much about it. So instead I forgot about colours, composition, the ‘correct’ brush to use or any sort of pre-arranged ‘design’ and just grabbed whatever tube of paint seemed nearest – which happened to be Hookers Green. No thought to careful quantities, I just mixed the paints, and then whatever looked like an interesting colour on the palette would end up on the canvas.

It’s good to paint like this for a change: good not to worry about results. In the end I actually quite like the result…but the main object of today was just to paint freely and loosely. It probably helped that the light was running out – no time to think. And choosing colours randomly instead of planning them brought out a few interesting results, especially when I didn’t always clean the brushes properly between application, letting the old colour bleed into the new.

Here’s a list of what I used:

Titanium White, Hookers Green, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine, Ivory Black, Yellow Ochre, Lemon Yellow and Raw Umber.

Landscape Painting: Suffolk

Back in February this year I took a trip to Suffolk to visit family. I was brought up in Suffolk so it’s a landscape I’m very familiar with. During my visit I spent some time walking in the countryside taking photographs to use as future reference and inspiration for painting. I decided I’d better use some of this material before winter comes around again! So in the last few days I’ve been working on a new painting inspired by the winter scenery in Suffolk.

I’ve chosen a square format again for this landscape painting and as usual I’m using acrylics on canvas. As you can see from the pictures above I don’t do much preparation. I’ve never really been one for making lots of sketches and plans – I tend to visualize a scene in my head and then go straight to canvas. All I did for this painting was make a very simple sketch in a small notebook to outline the basic composition. This I referred to while I was working to remind me of the plan in my head.

For the colour scheme I chose a limited palette. I’ve also written down which tubes I’ve used to keep a record for future reference. This winter palette is a mix of smoky blue/greys for the distant trees and the road in the foreground, with a very pale washed-out sky. I’ve also chosen a deep purple/brown to imitate the colours found in neatly cropped hedgerows – a feature so typical of modern Suffolk farmland. In contrast I’ve used a vivid, luminous green to highlight the field. I’m hoping this suggests the early growth of a crop and how electric the colour can seem in the midst of winter. A tiny part of me feels I’ve exaggerated this colour just a smidge – but I quite like that!

Anyway, here’s a photo of the finished painting. My experience of looking at it reminds me instantly of the fields and farmland ‘back home’ – this particular field is just 200 yards from my old house! So I’m pleased with the result. The canvas is quite small so I’m thinking I might continue this theme based on Suffolk landscapes on a larger scale: to give myself more room to express those huge open spaces.

Painting - Landscape (Across River at Low Tide)

Spent the day painting today. Felt it was the right sort of day. So I re-arranged my workspace by moving some of the pottery kit to one side and set up my easel and paint box. One day I might have enough space so I won’t have to do this.

I decided to use some material that I’d put together back in January this year. Most of the reference work is photos that were taken over different days and in different weather conditions. The themes I’ve been working on in my recent paintings are simple landscapes of farmland and views across local marshland and rivers. The emphasis is on very simple colour schemes and a build up of layers of landscape; almost like looking at a textile with bands of different fabric. But the overall aim is for a simple naturalism: it has to look realistic at a glance but without too much concern for detail. If that makes sense.

So I chose a small deep edge canvas (20cm x 20cm) for today’s picture and grabbed a couple of old brushes and just went for it. No preparation besides a couple of lines sketched using a piece of charcoal. I find that the less I prepare, the less I ‘worry’ about it or get caught up in unnecessary detail. And apart from a couple of frustrating moments when I had to wipe off some paint where I’d ‘gone wrong’ it was surprisingly relaxing. Much more relaxing than making pots!

Anyway, in these pictures (as you can probably already guess) you can see a composite of the picture being painted in stages and an image of how the painting stands now (at the top). Still not sure if it’s ‘finished’: it will need some time to ‘settle’ in my mind before I know if I’m happy with it. But a nice relaxing day of painting today, which is good.

Three Trees - Small Landscape Painting

I’ve been a bit pre-occupied lately with sorting out all my photographs. My computer was near bursting point with all of them. So I’ve been weeding through all my files and throwing out the out-of-focus stuff and endless duplicates that were clogging up the hard drive. It’s amazing how long these things take, especially if you’ve been avoiding it for months (possibly years…). At last though I’ve got everything backed-up and the older images that I’m not using at the moment are now safely archived in a drawer. My computer can breath more freely now.

Most of the images I take these days seem to fall into one of three main categories: pots, paintings and ‘research/resource materials’ for making either pots or paintings. And then in between there’s the occasional picture of someone smiling on a beach! With digital cameras it’s so easy to take 200 or 400 images in one go, which means sometimes I lose track of a batch of images and consequently the ‘plans’ I had for them. One such plan was to start adding my paintings to my Folksy shop. Such an obvious plan! And yet somehow it got waylaid…

Until today. At last I’ve finally listed an original painting in my shop. Above and below are some pictures of it (which, yes, I took today…don’t ask why!) and if you click on the pics they should take you to the listing. This painting is called ‘Three Trees’ and depicts a garden landscape. It’s a small acrylic on a ‘deep edge’ canvas and measures 6 x 6 x 1 ½ inches (15cm x 15cm x 4cm). I’m very fond of this painting – it’s quite restful and understated – and I think it’s a lovely little painting to start off with in my shop. And it seems to go quite well with the pots and cards already in there too!

Before the rain

I always seem to be saying I never have any time to paint – or I’m in the process of ‘getting back into it’. Part of the problem is I’ve always felt painting is much more dependant on mood – you have to be in the right frame of mind to start or it just won’t work. At least that’s how it is with me. So I was pleased to find I was in the right mood today and coincidentally (at last) I also had a free day; totally clear of plans and empty of ‘to dos’.

So I decided to set up a small painting using one of my new canvases; an 8-inch squared ‘deep edge’ canvas. The painting is based on a series of photographs I took at the beginning of January of an open field of grass in front of a farm. The day was divided between rain and sunshine and I tried to illustrate this changeable wintery weather in the painting. In one photograph the sky was quite dark with rain clouds against a bright sunlit farm and field. I’m not sure this is absolutely clear in the painting as it looks quite ‘green and blue’ to me at the moment, when perhaps it should be more ‘green and grey’… so I may have to think about retouching it.

Anyway, I thought I’d put together a little composite of the ‘stages’ this painting went through. It’s quite a simple painting really and I tried to minimise the detail since it’s only small-scale. I’m going to leave it hanging on a wall for a few days so I can catch sight of it during normal day-to-day things. I find this helps me make decisions about whether it ‘works’ or not: whether it needs more work or is in fact ‘finished’.

At last a good day of painting though!

Birch Trees on the Downs

I painted this little landscape sketch a couple of weeks ago. It’s only small: just 5 inches by 5 inches on a deep-edge canvas. I’ve done a couple of these very small canvases recently (see here) and I’ve really enjoyed making them. I suppose I’ve enjoyed it because I haven’t had to worry about filling up the canvas – which sometimes feels like a large white and empty desert! Instead I can focus on a simple idea using a very simple colour scheme without fussing too much over the ‘finish’. They take just an hour or so to paint from beginning to end, and I think they work nicely because of this ‘no frills’ feel they seem to have.

This particular one is based on a quick line sketch I made about ten years ago while out walking on the South Downs near Ditchling Beacon. The sketch is also very simple – just three birch trees against a rolling slope on the downs. At the time it was autumn so the tree trunks were a lovely pure white and the leaves were bright yellow/orange against a rainy, grassy green. I’ve been meaning to do something with this sketch for a while, and finally a week or so ago I made this colour ‘doodle’.

The paints I used were very sparse: Hooker’s Green, Yellow Ochre, Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Umber, Titanium White and just a tiny blob of Leaf Green to add a touch of zing to the grass. I quite like the result; which is sort of chunky and loose somehow. I may come back to it and do a more ‘finished’ piece someday – or I may not! In the meantime this little canvas is hanging up in my studio and feels nice and cool and soothing; especially now my studio is getting so hot in the sun!

Small Landscape Painting

Yesterday I spent the afternoon painting this small 5 x 5 inch box canvas. That’s about 12.5cm squared in new money. I’ve got a few of these mini canvases lying around and thought it was time to use some of them. At first I wondered if I was going to have trouble painting on such a small scale: I’ve done a few this size before and found it difficult making a composition work in such a confined space. It can also feel like a very cramped way of painting. But since I don’t really have a properly formed idea for anything larger at the moment, I also thought it’d be a nice way of doing some painting without feeling the pressure of having to ‘fill the page’.

The inspiration for this scene came from a bike ride I had a couple of weeks ago on the banks of the River Medina. This is a simplified scene of the opposite bank viewed across the water at about 9am in the morning – so it had a wintery morning feel. There was a patch of lovely green lawns opposite and the colour of them seemed to pick out the wintery, purple foliage. I’m not sure what the title is yet. A Winter’s Morning Across the River…? Although that title seems bigger than the actual picture itself!

Anyway, I enjoyed painting this one: it all seemed to work this time without too much difficulty and I’m pleased with the result (although I may have to tweak a few bits). I used seven different paints in total: Raw Umber, Ultramarine, Yellow Ochre, Hookers Green, Cobalt Blue, Titanium White and just a dash of Black Ivory for a bit of depth. And that was it – all started and finished in one day. It’s good to have days like that.

Painting - Small Landscape Study

I’ve been painting all day today in my studio. Above is a photo of my day's work. Not really a ‘finished’ piece of course but a sketch or study I suppose - just to get the ideas going. It’s been a while since I painted anything so I’m a bit rusty - although after about ten minutes I was totally absorbed and almost forgot to have lunch.

I’ve used acrylics on a small 10 x 10 inch canvas, mixing the paints with just a smidge of water now and then if the paint gets too sticky or dry. A limited palette of just nine colours; the main ones being: -

Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Raw Umber, Titanium White, Yellow Ochre

Then just a dash of these for highlights and emphasis: -

Burnt Sienna, Sap Green, Leaf Green, Coeruleum

It’s a view made entirely from memory of the River Medina which I was cycling alongside one day last week in the late afternoon. Of course it isn’t a view of any specific point, but a general ‘mood’ I was trying to capture, particularly the colours at the end of a clear winter’s day about twenty minutes before twilight.

Anyway, it was fun to do. Whether or not it gets ‘finished’ or something else comes out of it I don’t know yet, but I got so engrossed I didn’t realize how cold it was in my studio – standing all day on cold concrete. So this evening I’m suffering from a bit of a 'chill' and have the fire going while I sit under a pile of blankets!