Fishermens shelter and London workshop

Fishermens shelter
Oils 14" x 18"

I had the immense pleasure of spending a couple of days in the fishermens shelter in Portscatho last year, when I put on a little pop-up exhibition with The Harbour Gallery. I was really inspired by the large window overlooking the sea and the way the sunlight came into the room. I did paint this view while I was there but I always felt that I had another one in me. 

Now I've painted this larger version in the studio and I'm really happy with it. It's one of six paintings that I'm framing up at the moment to send for selection to the Mall Galleries for the annual Royal Society of Marine Artists exhibition. 

This August I'm going to be running a day workshop at the Mall Galleries in London about 'Capturing the essence', talking about the ways I use simplification in my work. What is important to include and what can be left out?

Find out more and book yourself a place here :-)

Happy Christmas time

Snow at the Roseland Inn

I hope that you are all having a nice Christmas and New Year break. I'm loving the way that everything slows down and you can spend time relaxing with friends and family and not worry that you should be doing anything else. I love checking my emails and seeing hardly any new ones - except for all the January sale ones which I'm deleting straight away.

This painting of a Cornish pub in the snow - oh how I wish we had snow on the way - is now on show in the winter exhibition at the Harbour Gallery, Portscatho. 

You can have a look at all the paintings in this lovely exhibition here.

Bay view

Room with a view, Portscatho

I couldn't resist painting the view from the window and the whole window and a part of the little fisherman's shelter! Fun to paint my paintings within a painting.
 It was such a wonderful place to spend a couple of days. Can you imagine having a studio with a sea view like this? What a dream :-)

Room with a view

Painting this morning in the fisherman's shelter 

Could this be the most idyllic setting for an exhibition ever? I think so. I'm feeling very lucky to be here with my little exhibition overlooking Portscatho harbour for two days. 

As you can see the sun was shining today and it could not have been more lovely!

You can see all the paintings in the exhibition for a limited time only on the Harbour Gallery website. Which is your favourite? 

Fisherman's shelter

Fisherman's shelter, Portscatho
8" x 10"

Just so that you can find me when you come by for a celebratory drink tomorrow evening (Tuesday 25th August) 6.30 - 8.00 pm, this is where I'll be - at the fisherman's shelter in Portscatho, Cornwall. Right by the harbour and the red telephone box, you can't miss it. 

I'll also be painting at this fab venue on Wednesday and Thursday from 11.00 am - 4.00 pm.

I have a poor mobile phone signal around here and no internet access in the daytime so if you need more information please contact Mark at the Harbour Gallery. We can't wait to see you in this idyllic place :-)

Explaining my absence...

Tall ships at Falmouth docks
Oils 12" x 16" unframed 16" x 20" framed
£950

I should have sent you a postcard, I know... but I've been a busy girl dashing about all over the place again. I've had the pleasure of five days of painting in Cornwall, mostly at Falmouth where tall ships from around the world were moored for the first time since 2008, for the Falmouth to Royal Greenwich Tall Ships Regatta. 

What a fantastic carnival atmosphere there was! There were thousands and thousands of people there and it was pretty hard to find a spot to paint at times. It can be pretty overwhelming in such a crowded place, but once you've staked your spot by setting up your easel and start working you can pretty well block the rest out and you become sort of a part of the scenery.

For the last month or so I've been taking advantage of the fine weather and taking canvasses out with me to paint, rather than panels or boards. I've absolutely loved painting on the soft yielding surface of canvas. It's always been my preferred choice for the studio but takes a little bit more effort to carry outside and isn't ideal on a windy day.

My favourite size to use outside has been 12" x 16" and sometimes 14" x 18" and I will be exhibiting my latest paintings from France and Cornwall at Patchings art centre near Nottingham, where my very 

next solo exhibition will open on October 4th.

Yes it's very soon and yes I'm very busy finishing and framing, signing and varnishing right now!

Click here for details :-)

Detail 

If you can't wait til then to get your hands on one of my tall ships paintings and claim it for yourself then you might like to take a look at the Harbour Gallery as Mark already has three hanging up on the walls, all framed up and looking beautiful, including this one.

Squeezing in wherever I could get a view!

Silver light at Mousehole

Silver light at Mousehole
8" x 10"

On the one day that it didn't rain for me in Mousehole this is the other painting I achieved, and I'm really pleased with it. You get such blinding sunlight on the water in Mousehole when the sun is shining. Although this looks a lot like a sunset it was actually painted in the morning. In the foreground of the painting you can see that it's high tide in the harbour. The other noticeable feature is the one boat. In winter the vast majority of boats are taken out of the harbour and onto dry land to decrease the risk of damage. A very good thing too when you consider the awful storms we've had this winter.

When I next visit Mousehole in April there will be a lot of boats back in the water, which is good for me for painting. Although, I do very much like this simple uncluttered scene too.

The colours in the dark area of the harbour wall have subtle differences of hue and value which are not apparent on the photo really.

All three of these paintings were delivered on Friday and available to buy now at the Harbour Gallery.

Today I am travelling to a hotel at Gatwick airport ready to fly to Marrakech in the early hours of tomorrow. I may not have any access to wifi while I'm over there so if you don't hear from me that's why. I'll show you all the paintings when I get back.

Perfect summer's day

A perfect summer's day, Portscatho

After four mostly rainy days in Cornwall when I had to leave on Friday the weather had transformed into a mini heatwave with sunshine and blue skies as far as the eye could see. It goes like that sometimes. Hopefully my week in Morocco will be dry. 

Although I didn't get very much plein air painting achieved last week I did at least have time to finish this studio painting of Portscatho harbour. I'm afraid the photo above doesn't really do it justice.

It's now available for purchase at the Harbour Gallery in Portscatho along with many others. Take a better look here.

And... I remembered to take some photos of the work in progress as I know you like to see that :-)

End of a perfect day, Sennen beach

End of a perfect day, Sennen beach

Here's my latest Cornwall painting which I'll be taking down next week to the Harbour Gallery.  Fingers crossed for some good painting weather from Monday onwards! I'm really pleased with this as it's hard to keep the freshness with a studio painting. Also it's a perfect reminder of longer, warmer days to come.

Here are some photos taken as I went along...

Early stage,  love the abstract patterns made by the receding tide and rocks on the beach

Right back at this early stage just about everything was already said. I just needed to add the warmth from the setting sun.

At this stage I stopped to think about where to place figures

And then it was a case of adding figures, to give the painting human interest and a sense of scale. I looked back at reference photos and had a think about where best to place them.

With figures to give a sense of scale and story

This could be on your mantlepiece soon!
Just over 16" x 20" framed

This painting is available now for £595 from Mark at the Harbour Gallery. Give him a call if you'd like to snap it up on 01872 580807  :-)

Chasing Albert

Painting in situ Portscatho harbour

Another one from my Cornwall trip. This is Portscatho on the Roseland peninsular. I had to move halfway through the painting because I was roasting hot in the sun, even though it was evening and I had my umbrella set up! I kept thinking it would cool off and it didn't, so eventually I found a place in the shade lower down. Phew! It was a relief to get this spot and take my shoes off and finish the painting barefoot.
I don't have a very good photo of this one because I framed it and left it in the gallery within a few hours of painting it :-)

It's called 'Chasing Albert' because I could hear a child calling the name Albert over and over again. Eventually I discovered that Albert and his sister were swimming in the harbour, and it was little brother standing on the jetty doing all the shouting!
Albert and sister made it into the painting.

Chasing Albert

Available to buy from the Harbour Gallery :-)

Party boat!

Waiting for regatta day
Oils 10" x 12"

I forgot to show you this one also from my trip to Cornwall in July, and it's one of my favourites! You know that I have a soft spot for flags and bunting don't you? I thought this little boat looked so jaunty, showing off that colourful regalia against the dark of the harbour wall and the deep reflections in the water. I couldn't resist!
As a sort of bonus or side order, I also love the area looking out to sea in the gap between the harbour walls. There was a bit of a sparkle going on there and I spotted it!

If you would like to own this painting it is currently on show at the Scarlet hotel in Cornwall, contact Mark at the Harbour Gallery for info :-)

Sennen cove and new website

Evening light at Sennen Cove 8" x 10"
SOLD

This is another one painted on my July trip to Cornwall, and already sold at the Scarlet hotel thanks to Mark at the Harbour Gallery :-)

Sennen cove is magical in the evening light, I definitely need more visits there. It is of course a place where Ken Howard has painted a lot over the years.

I found out some great news yesterday. All six of the paintings I've entered for the Royal Society of Marine Artists exhibition this year have been pre-selected. This means they've passed the first round of selection and now have to make their way down to the Mall galleries in London for the final selection round. Now don't get too excited just yet, because last year I had four make it through pre-selection but none of them actually made it to the walls!
Still, I think you should celebrate all little successes and I'm glad my entry has got thus far. I shall keep you informed...

And here's something worth celebrating! I've got a new website! Ok it's not brand new but it's as good as new after having spent a great many hours giving it a revamp! There's not a page on there that has been spared the overhaul, and lots of new pages too, so please go along and have a good old rummage through :-)

www.haideejo.com

There'll be an online store to follow so I'll let you know when that all happens, and my blog has also had a freshen up so if you receive this by email you might like to go and take a look at blog base camp too, at www.haideejo.blogspot.com

Going to the beach

On location between Portscatho and Porthcurnick

You've already seen this painting on the easel in the field, literally, but I wanted to show you the step by step photos that I took along the way. The painting took around three hours to complete, on the hottest day of the year so far. This stretch of coastline is known as the Cornish riviera.

I started with a pretty careful drawing (with the brush and a turpsy mix of paint) to plan everything in and see how it all fits together. I was standing next to one of the main footpaths leading from the car park down to the beach, so there were quite a few people walking past me and I had the idea from this early stage that I'd like to put somebody into the painting for extra interest.

I chose this lady with her straw hat and orange bag, so I had to paint her in quickly while she was still fresh in my mind.

I then wanted to remind myself that the sunlit sand on the beach was one of the lightest values.

From there to the colours of the distant cliffs. I was extremely particular about getting the tonal values right. I think one of the hardest jobs in painting is to paint an area with different colours that have to be almost exactly the same in value, as in a distant landscape like this. I was already uncomfortably hot, but I wasn't slacking!

The next big challenge was getting in the sky and sea with the right colour bias and even more importantly the right relationship of tonal values between each other and the distant land.

Buoyed up by the results of that struggle, I needed to get some greens going to cover this foreground area and from there it was just a skip, hop and a jump to....

 darkening up the foreground greens plus some detailing on the little tree and filling in the missing gaps before hot footing it out of there quite literally... I was so very hot.

Little did I know that a delicious lunch was waiting for me at the Hidden Hut!

I'm sorry that the link didn't work yesterday for the Harbour Gallery in Portscatho, hopefully this one will!