Barn interior

Barn interior

I finally managed to get a half decent photo of last week's barn painting as well as a couple of other recent ones. I've also been planning a trip to Cornwall to paint, coming up very soon!

Lots going on as always, including two workshops this week on painting a still life with flowers in acrylics. One was for the lovely members of Newark art club and the next one is this coming Friday. Today I was painting at the allotments again (hooray!) and last week had a try at painting canal barges - it was tricky -pictures to follow! :-)

Mystery in shadows and brilliant greens

This barn is only a few hundred metres from my house and I often notice great painting subjects around and within it while walking past with my naughty but cute dog. I painted this corner last summer, but less barn and included the lane going up the hill.
This week it was all about those bright fresh greens of early summer and the deep mysterious coolness of the barn interior in shadow.
To my absolute delight I had an unsuccessful painting to work on top of.

I was really fed up with this painting back in Easter on Bréhat. I got caught in a real downpour stuck out on the rocks!
Now I was thrilled to have this dry base to work on, with it's existing colours and textures.

I started with a dark glaze over the barn area...

Starting to place the greens, at this point it's becoming less of a seascape!

Putting more definition into those greens...

Adding the light colour of the sky...

All starting to come together, working on what is going on inside the barn from here on and little highlights for the cow parsley flowers.

I will try to take a better photo of the painting to show you tomorrow...

North Heath Lane in snow

North Heath Lane in snow

Our snow has all gone now, but here's another one from last week. It was Monday and we had about four or five inches of snow settle overnight. The local roads were pretty dangerous that day and I decided I'd rather not drive anywhere if I could help it.  So I took my paints out on a sledge and headed up this hill away from the village. The effect of looking back towards the village and hill behind was lovely and soft and muted - things which don't come easily to me with painting but I'm trying hard to introduce softness and blending where it is needed!

Now that the snow has gone outside, I'm working on snow inside the studio - the painting based on the sketch of the ponies that I showed you last week. I'm not sure how it's going - it's exciting and terrifying all at the same time. It's not very often that I don't have the subject in front of me! Well I do have the line drawing in front of me, but no colour notes which also makes it quite freeing.

It's amazing that in the space of a few days all this snow has gone, and this lane is now back to it's default winter setting - mud!