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.
These favourite snow scenes of mine, painted this year, have all sold in the last month and are heading off to their new homes. It's so rewarding every time my passion for painting the gorgeous snowy domestic subjects is deeply loved and appreciated by somebody else.
'First snow, Drove allotments' is a complete favourite of mine. Painted entirely en plein air I haven't had a single day since where I have been quite as euphoric painting as I was on that day. Such excitement, to be at the allotments with snow. Simple pleasures eh?
This painting also felt like real progress to me, in the manner in which it was painted. It was as though I'd passed another level or grade in my pursuit of simplification.
It goes to join another of my snow scenes from the previous winter at it's lovely new home.
Treading softly
What can I say about 'Treading softly'? Well this photo doesn't do it justice at all. It marks another huge turning point in the development of my work and I was almost holding my breath all the while I was painting it. I was desperate to communicate that delicate softness of the icy early winter morning when your breath hangs in the air as if frozen and shapes are emerging and hidden by the morning mist. I have a tendency to be heavy handed and knew that with this one I had to approach it so delicately and softly and not like a bull in a china shop! That's why I was holding my breath the whole while!
The abstracted shapes and colour combinations within this painting do take my breath away, and I actually feel cold coming off the painting when I stand in front of it. I'm also very proud of this one and happy that it has gone to a very good home.
Out of the woods
'Out of the woods' is a good example of the less is more and get it down quick tactic. It's a much smaller painting than the others here and it's that end of the winters day, do I have it in me to stay out for one more hour? Oh my gosh look at those long shadows and the sun going down behind the trees. Yes. I. Do.
The thaw, Drove allotments
Aww 'the thaw'. Well this one is the largest snow painting yet and I passionately love it also. It's a bittersweet emotion because the snow is melting and my time to paint it is running out fast but what an exciting contrast to try to capture! The warm sunlight, the cool shadows on the snow and that really fresh green of the sodden grass emerging from it's cold cloak. Added to which the structure of the sheds, the opportunity for little abstract passages. Bliss. And strong tonal contrasts which meant that for this one I could be just as gung ho as I wanted! This one is like the 'yang' if 'Treading softly' is the yin.
'The thaw' is currently on display in the Royal Institute of Oil painters annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. Do go in and see an amazing show if you can but be quick, it ends at 1.00pm on Sunday 13th December.
Another very happy and fortunate event from my Patchings festival week... my painting 'The thaw, Drove allotments' won a prize in The Artist exhibition in the Barn Gallery!
The exhibition is open until the 19th July and well worth a visit, but if you are too far away you can see all the paintings in the exhibition, plus the Leisure Painter exhibition, and the Highly Commended entries here - click on the links at the side to view all the categories. You can also vote for your favourites for the people's choice award.
My prize is £250 to spend on art materials from Great Art - woohoo! I have received my catalogue and vouchers and will really enjoy spending them :-)
Many many thanks to Great Art, and Patchings art centre and The Artist magazine and the judges!
With Penny German and Sally Bulgin, editor of The Artist magazine
I was absolutely over the moon that my friend Penny German won The Artist purchase award with her beautiful painting of the cribbage chair. Take a look at Penny's daily painting blog here.
And enjoy the armchair viewing of the exhibitions at Patchings! :-)
This is a study for a future studio painting, another in my favourite series of the snowy allotments. Is there anything better, I ask you, than when the sun glows through a greenhouse and lights it up like a jewel? I'm very excited about the abstract possibilities of this subject.
By the way, blogger can't cope with the blues again! The shadow areas of snow are so much softer and more subtle in hue than they appear on the screen. Sigh.
My big painting from the allotments last week in the snow. I really am pleased and excited with this. I feel as though there is a real breakthrough going on for me at the moment, and that the recent studio work I've been doing with the Christmas market scenes is now impacting on my plein air work. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what's going on but it's all very exciting. It's all to do with being able to say it more succinctly - "marked by compact precise expression without wasted words".
Incidentally I should tell you that it doesn't always go swimmingly and sometimes progress seems just beyond reach but I always know that it will come. When I'm going through a period of self doubt I just believe that it means a change is coming. I had this belief strongly in November and December last year and now I'm starting to see why. I just tell you that in case it's any use to you, to encourage you to develop that belief for yourself and carry on when it feels like you're dragging your feet through mud!
In situ
So for now I'm very happy to see where it takes me!
A detail showing brushmarks
I love the interesting marks and edges in this painting and I'm going to hang on to it for a while here in the studio. It's leading the way for now...
We were blessed with a covering of snow again last week! It arrived overnight and by three o clock the next day it was all but gone. Luckily I had the chance to make the most of it and was able to get out early with all my paints and equipment in the car. After dropping the children off at school I was ready to go and I managed to find an allotments which I knew existed but I'd never been able to find before.
Everything there was covered in a blanket of snow, and my excitement level was at about fever pitch!
At first the sky was quite brooding and overcast while I had a good look around taking lots of photos, but by the time I was back where I started the sun was shining and things really started to warm up.
This is the second painting I did there, which took less than an hour and a half. You can see how rapidly the snow was melting by looking at this photo taken after I'd finished. It went from everything blanketed in snow at 9am to mostly mud and greenery by 2.00pm. The plus side to this rapid thaw was that I was lovely and warm standing in the sun, and of course I love the chance to paint strong clear shadows on snow which I wouldn't have had if the sun had stayed hidden.
The thing that really grabbed me here was the table and stack of chairs which looked kind of inviting in the sun there, although covered in a fine coat of snow. I also loved the light valued canes against the dark trees behind.
I must confess I was really pleased with the economy of my mark making on this one, was able to describe effectively what was happening with just a minimum of shapes and colour.
A detail
On my screen the shadow area of this picture looks a ghastly blue, which it isn't in real life. It really is a lovely subtle violet. Hope it looks ok on yours!
We haven't had lots of snow this winter, but more than last year anyway which was none at all! In the couple of days of snow we had in January I had a drive around the local villages and found this wonderful view, looking across the fields outside Londonthorpe. I was particularly struck by the shape of that lovely tree halfway down the hill, and the gorgeous light effect giving warmth to its higher branches. Also how that warmth contrasted with the cool violet shadows falling across the foreground field. Gorgeous!
While I was there I saw a villager pouring salt on the icy road, another clearing a driveway with a shovel and one struggling to get his car out of a side road because of the depth of snow there. An awful lot of disruption and then within two days, there was no snow to be seen except for a frosting of ice here and there. This tends to be the way of things when snow falls in England, absolute pandemonium and then it's gone :-)
In between the fun and feasting and visits I was able to get out locally and paint the snow that had fallen overnight - such excitement after not having had snow here for at least 20 months!
I didn't have a suitable board prepared with an under colour, so I had to start with a white surface for this one which I don't really like to do. So I used some glaze medium mixed in with the paint and turps for the first stages adding thinned blues and purples, very much like a watercolour technique.
This was dry enough to add thicker lighter paint on top within the hour, without any difficulties.
I have been so busy with Christmas things as I like to really leave it until December to get started. Hence a few weeks of present buying, house decorating, food ordering, socialising... I haven't started to write any Christmas cards yet. And as for wrapping, well...
I've also been working on my website developing the store items so that books and greetings cards can now be purchased easily online direct from my studio, including this new winter card 'Chicken huts in the snow'. I've added about a dozen paintings to the site also, it's worth checking back from time to time to see new ones which become available. My calendars have been so popular that I only have two left as well as one for me out of the 100 I had printed. Be quick if you want one!
I've also been out painting and taking photos at the Christmas market in Lincoln so I hope to show you a few of those paintings very soon!
Tomorrow I'm off to London for the Royal Institute of Oil painters exhibition, so it will be great to catch up with many friends there, and that will be my first visit of three to the exhibition which ends on Sunday 21st December at 1pm. You can see many of the paintings in the exhibition online if you can't make it to the Mall Galleries. Click here to see the works.
Winter collection of ten cards, two designs
Collectors pack, assorted designs
A peek inside Volume 2 Paintings of light and colour
It's that time of year again for my end of year review, so I'll be taking a few days to look back over all of my artistic events of this year before starting to focus on what's coming next. If you only joined me part way through the year I hope you'll find something of interest here and if you've been with me all the way through I hope you won't mind taking a recap with me. It's been another busy year of fun and travels and opportunity, and being able to spend time with lots of great people who share this passion of mine.
The year began with generous amounts of snowfall in January which meant I was able to get outside a lot to paint one of my favourite subjects - snow! The painting above is definitely one of my top favourites of the year, and was painted in challenging conditions with quite a blizzard at times! The chickens and ducks disappeared and hid whenever the snowfall was heavy.
Painting at Galley Hill allotments
Belton House formal gardens
North Heath lane in snow
SOLD
I even tackled something I never had before, painting moving figures sledging and playing in the snow, and I loved it! I wanted the snow to stay for longer but I didn't get a chance to paint those sledgers again this year. There is a little video on YouTube of me painting there that you might enjoy.
In February I was a guest artist giving workshops at the SAA 'Its All About Art' event in Manchester and took part in a group exhibition in London on the subject of Venice. I ran a workshop on painting cats in acrylics, and gave demos to local art societies.
In this period I had a couple of articles published in The Artist magazine including one about 'finding your own style' which also became the theme for a couple of workshops.
I was proud of these two self portraits that I painted in early spring, and both were pre-selected for the Royal Society of Portrait painters exhibition in February. I need to paint more portraits, it's something I love to do.
Self portrait with warm backlighting
Self portrait with iPhone
In March came the trip of a lifetime - painting in Essaouira, Morocco, with Ken Howard RA. In my opinion Ken is the top of the tops here in the UK, and it was such a privilege to be able to get to know him. I didn't spend very much painting time with him because I was so excited by the new surroundings and wanted to choose my own subjects, particularly in the harbour area. We had wonderful group get-togethers in the evening though, and Ken was happy to look over our work while we had the pleasure of viewing all of his work. I only hope I have his energy and stamina when I am in my eighties.
Back of Millfield Terrace in winter Watercolour and acrylic ink
Another recent snowy watercolour based on one of my favourite local painting spots, the allotments in Sleaford.
I started this one with a fairly careful pencil drawing and some blue masking fluid to reserve the highlights. I knew that getting this structure in place early on would enable me to apply the paint and ink freely in later stages.
Firstly the warm sky and reflections in greenhouse glass plus some warmth for the snow in the foreground.
Next I used a mix of ultramarine blue watercolour and sepia acrylic ink diluted with water for the snow in shadow areas and the shadowy backs of the terraced houses, sheds, fences etc.
When that was all dry I went back in with neat ink and a wet brush to confirm all the darkest passages. All that was left to do then was the peeling off of the masking fluid when the paint was dry.
COUNTDOWN!! Only 32 days until my big exhibition begins in Nottingham UK...
8th to 18th January 2014 10.30am - 4.00pm at 71 Friar Lane Nottingham NG1 6DH
The days are too short and too dark at the moment, and now we have 70mph gales! On Tuesday our heating stopped working but luckily it was fixed yesterday. Then today we've had a power cut lasting most of the afternoon, but fortunately it's back on just in time for darkness falling. Amazing what you miss without electricity ... heating, wifi, phone and coffee to name just a few!
Anyway here's a cheery scene, a glowing watercolour that I painted recently. There's no actual snow here yet but they're saying blizzards are on their way so watch this space...
I started with wet into wet watercolour for the yellow and orange glow, and while this wash was still damp I used a darker warm colour to start to describe the background tree shapes.
Closer trees and a little bit of fence went in next...
Establishing the darkest darks is tricky to get right in watercolour, remember it dries a lot lighter than it looks when you put it on. It's a good idea to have a little test sheet nearby to try out your colours on.
Some purple shadow washes and the addition of a few chickens in watercolour, and then I finished off in gouache putting some warm whites back into the sunlit snow.
If you're in Scotland, Wales, the north of England or East Anglia, especially by the coast, I hope you manage ok tonight with the storms.
I love days when it's just me painting, whether outdoors or in my studio. However I couldn't do only that day after day after day. I find that teaching and writing about painting both give me much needed structure, the impetus of new ideas, the time to review what I'm doing and the chance to get out and see people. I like the balance and how I manage to fit it all in, although it does all take a lot of planning time which sometimes overwhelms me a little! I am protective of my painting time and very careful not to over commit on the teaching front which could be easily done. I know and expect that each workshop and demo takes an equal amount of planning and preparation time and so I make sure to space these events out in my diary with plenty of my own painting time in between. The jobs I would probably outsource if I could are my accounts, my photography and framing. Plus technical computer things that I don't understand and hurt my brain! Oh, and cleaning and... hang on, I'm getting quite carried away now.
It's great to be able to get to know a painting place by going back again and again. Here are two paintings from Sutton-on-sea in Lincolnshire which is my nearest stretch of coast, both from this year. The first one was painted on a sunny day last month, and the other on a wintry day in February. They are both the same size (10" x 20") so I think it would be lovely to frame and hang them together.
I like to paint the sea in the context of where it fits into the landscape rather than painting just a section of the water or a slice of sea and sky which are generic and could be anywhere. To me painting seascapes is more about painting a portrait of a particular place at a particular time of day at a certain time of the year.
Sledgers at Belmont tower, Grantham Oil on canvas 14" x 18"
Here's the studio version of 'Sledgers', starring my own son in the foreground! I hope you like it, it really pleased me to do it. I loved painting the original at the time, but I feel this is a better painting. I hope I have managed to keep the freshness of the plein air piece, I think I have. I was careful to keep the sketchy treatment of the figures. The nice thing about painting this version in the studio is that I could better consider where to place the figures.
The original version painted en plein air Oil on panel 10" x 12"
In case you missed it back then, this is the fun video of the painting day!
