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...

Late summer, North heath lane

Late summer, north heath lane
Oil on panel 24 x 30cms

I can't remember the last time I had a day at home in my studio - and enjoyed it as much as I have today!
With a lot of patient consideration (something I'm working on because it doesn't come naturally!) I finished this one that I painted in the lane on Friday. I'm afraid this photo lets it down because it's played down the warmth - the field on the right is much more of a warm gold than the yellow it looks here. I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out and I don't think I've spoiled it with the extra twiddling!
I've also done some radical work on a commission so I'm in a kind of scary 'it will look a lot worse before it gets better' kind of scenario! And I'm still workshop planning. This Wednesday's drawing workshop will be exciting!
Also I received such a lovely letter from Newark Art Club to thank me for my demonstration last week. It made my day! :-)
Thought you might like to see these too...

The SAA Paint magazine's latest edition with my Oilbar article

Little piece about my Pro Arte award in September's The Artist magazine.
I haven't ordered any of my new brushes yet!
Looking forward to it!

Friday, work in progress...

Work in progress - had to stop not long after this as the light had gone

I really have lots and lots of business/admin/email/workshop writing type work to be getting on with after my lovely August break, so that kept me busy all morning. Then of course Friday afternoon at 2 o clock is coffee time with my friends, and I haven't seen some of them for six weeks. Everything else stops for an hour and a half on Friday afternoons during term time :-)
Then I was able to get out for two to three hours with Mabel, glorious late summer, late afternoon day as you can see! I can't tell you how many times I've walked past this barn and considered painting it. It's good to finally get on to it!
I got quite a lot further with the painting (the barn anyway) than this but couldn't take a good photo and there's one or two touches I want to finish.
I was reading about some fascinating research this morning by Dr Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard medical school. He found that volunteers who practised piano skills using only their imagination, looking at the keyboard without being able to touch it, gained the same brain pattern improvements as a group that had actually practised the exercises on the piano. I always knew it was a good thing to mentally draw or paint something when you haven't got any materials to hand. In fact, I did quite a lot of that when my children were very young and their needs kept me so busy! :-)