Summer studio

Garden studio!

 It's a big one! I've been battling on with some studio paintings recently. I'll be honest with you I feel I'm on a huge learning curve!
Here are my main aims with studio paintings -

• To paint on a much larger scale
• To carry to a further point ideas I have gathered from plein air painting sessions
• To keep the same simplicity and lively brushwork in the studio paintings that I have in my plein air work

My main difficulties with this presently are -

• First and foremost to keep the excitement and inspiration going when one step removed from the beloved subject
• Related to the above point and also due to working on a much larger scale, the awkward middle period when you really don't know if the thing is going to work or not goes on much longer and so...
• It's harder to break through the pain barrier!

We're still roasting hot here so I have to leave my studio by 11 am at the latest as it's an oven by then, and move kit and caboodle outside.
The only drawback with painting in the garden is really that I have to keep kicking the football for Maisie. And sometimes I have to sit down with an ice cream or a glass of ginger beer. Ho hum.

Rowing club at Putney

Rowing club at Putney

Things get hotter! The day after painting with the Royal Institute of Oil painters at Maidenhead I painted at Putney with the Wapping group - boy was it hot in the city! Thirty degrees celsius I found out later. There was actually a weather warning in place, we're not good at dealing with weather extremes in this country. Heat and cold both take us by surprise. We're fine with rain and drizzle though.
Anyway, of the four paintings spanning the two days this is by far my favourite one and it only took HALF AN HOUR to paint - how does that happen?!
In fact I confess that I almost didn't start it, thinking it was too ambitious a subject for the time frame but there you go! Surprised myself by managing to capture the essence of the scene, with probably no wasted strokes!

Rowing club at Putney - detail

This is the other painting from the day, the one I laboured over in the sweltering heat -

Towards Putney bridge

And this is a better look at the afternoon one from the day before - 

Basking in the heat

Fishing on the Thames

We in the UK are in a state of shock. I must try to explain to my international friends. We are currently experiencing what can only be described as ... summer.
The days are hot and long, the sun is shining and the sky is blue and clear. The thing that's really taken us by surprise this summer is that it hasn't been one glorious day followed by the default setting (rain) but actually waking up each day to beautiful sunshine.
It's like the summer we fondly remember/ dream of.
Sun screen has taken up residence in my painting kit and long may it continue!
Yesterday I was painting by the river Thames in Maidenhead with members and friends of the Royal Institute of Oil painters.
Today I'm heading to the Thames again but this time it's Putney to paint with members of the Wapping group. Maybe I will find another willing fisherman to model like this one.. thanks to you Dan :-)
I'll post a better pic of this when I get a chance to take one.

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! 

Hot in Portscatho!

Hottest day of the year!

Hope this little 'postcard from Portscatho' reaches you, I don't have access to much wifi here. I sort of have to stand on one leg in the bathroom holding my ipad above my head... anyway, trying to send a photo might be a bit too much for it!
It's a very pretty place as you can see.
I have painted down in the harbour here on Saturday evening and yesterday I managed three, of which this is one. It was so so hot all day, I couldn't have done this one without my umbrella to keep the sun a little bit removed from my head!
Later on today I'll be travelling home, via Somerset, and then I'll be able to give you more info from my trip, more pictures of paintings I've done here and even let you know how you can buy one! ;-)