The devil's in the detail

It's Friday ... Yeh! That means I get to spend a little time on my art after a fairly busy week at work :) I took the intrepid Louie the Beagle for a nice stroll along the riverbank - no sign of Rattie or Mole this time but there were lots of Canada Geese and Mallards, waddling around by the village church and waiting longingly for some bread. Sorry guys (and gals), I'm going sketching.

This is a view across the River Great Ouse which meanders its way through much of the old county of Huntingdonshire. I say old county because it was absorbed into Cambridgeshire a few decades ago,  although the local council has maintained the signs at the county boundaries - good for them I say!

I used vine charcoal and compressed charcoal and laid down a 'wash' of a light tone all over the paper to begin with to establish the average sky colour and to give a harmonious tone to the whole drawing. I was rushed a little towards the end as it started to get quite popular and it also started to spot a little as heavy rain clouds moved overhead. I would have liked to have had  a little more time to add some detail and to push and pull some of the values but after scanning it in I thought it looked quite fine as it was. Have a great weekend everyone :)

Hartford Flood Meadows

New horizons

I'm  a great lover of art in all its forms but I truly admire the work of the landscape painters. I'm not attracted to realism but instead seek out those artists that capture the beauty of those wonderful places with the apparent minimum of  effort where the human mind completes the detail. I'm a long way from achieving a style I can be proud of yet, but I think I'm getting there :)

For this piece I used a process kindly given to me by my lovely fellow blogger, Anita Murphy. I think Anita's charcoal work is fabulous and indeed all her work is a real inspiration to me. I'm not a huge fan of coloured papers like Ingres and prefer instead to use white paper but Anita's suggestion was to cover the white paper with a layer of charcoal and then to blend this with a paper towel to produce a mid-tone on which to work. You can then build the piece bit by bit by adding darks in charcoal and lifting out lights with an eraser and continue to push and pull the tones to get things just right.

I loved using this method, although you have to take extra care with lifting out since the charcoal sometimes lodges itself in the grain and can smudge rather than give a clean edge. I am very pleased with the result overall.

Imagination lakeland landscape

Back to basics

I have been neglecting my watercolour painting a little recently but I have been using the time wisely. I know that I need to hone my observation and drawing skills before I can truly develop as a watercolour painter. Every accomplished artist will tell you that being able to see and record values is extremely important and will serve you well whatever your chosen medium. Only once you have that skill can you then develop your compositional skills, colour theory and painting techniques. That's how I see it anyway :)

To help me along the way towards becoming a better painter I've invested in what must be the cheapest of all art supplies - charcoal. I picked up a nice little boxed set of pencils, compressed and natural willow charcoal pieces for less than I normally spend on a single sketchbook:) I've been practicing with charcoal in all the different forms just to get to know how it behaves and so far I absolutely love it.

Just to take it a bit further I managed to do a little sketch on the way home from my work. I love to sit by the river but often find it difficult to pick a subject - there are so many I am spoiled for choice. This particular view of the house surrounded by willows and other trees by the river has often attracted me so with 30 mins to spare I sat down and drew it.

House by the willows

Finally, a big welcome to my latest follower Lucia B who has been one of my contacts on Flickr for quite a while. If you haven't already seen her lovely paintings of her home city of Firenze (Florence), then go take a look.  She always adds a little bit of historic background about each of the paintings that she posts. Thanks for following my blog, Lucia :)