Staithes rooftops

Staithes rooftops

This was worth walking up a hill and missing breakfast for... although I did have second thoughts once I was set up and began to draw in the complicated arrangement of shapes. When I say 'draw' I do mean with the brush and paint. With an architectural type subject I start with a linear sketch-in with a smallish brush, but I am always keen to move onto large value shapes as soon as I can. With a subject like this it's too easy to get lost in detail at the expense of the mood or get so worried about accuracy that you run out of time and lose the light. Luckily I had a strict time deadline which got me reaching for the big brushes and I got what I was after here.

This painting is now available to purchase at Staithes art gallery.

There is a brush set with ten of the brushes that I most commonly use available from Rosemary & Co. Click here for details :-)

It's complicated!

It's complicated!

I had my first full day here in Cornwall and I produced three and a half paintings in beautiful Mousehole.
This one took the longest and had the most head scratching!
There were many times in the first hour when I thought I would give up and pack it away. The excuses went like this - 'it's getting too windy now' and 'it's a complicated subject. I've got the drawing sketched in. I should come back and finish it another day'.
Then my determination set in. I turned down my internal voices, turned up my podcast (Artists helping Artists) and carried on.
Three hours after starting, I was really glad I did it. The sense of achievement is even better when you have doubts to start with, when you get over hurdles. :-)