Cloudy memories

It  has been raining for most of the day ... again ... and the Met Office forecast a deluge of almost biblical proportions ... but thankfully it hasn't happened, and now it's a pleasant, dry evening here in the East of England. I painted this view of the lush green flood meadows across the river from visual memory with more than a hint of artistic license of course ;-)

Happy painting to you all!

Great Ouse and flood meadows, Huntingdon, watercolour on Saunders Waterford 140lb Rough, 10x11", 25x28cm

The river in flood

I painted this one from a reference photo that I took in February 2010 just before sunset and at a time when the River Great Ouse was quite high and had started to overflow onto the flood meadows that line its banks for much of its course through Huntingdon and the neighbouring villages . This particular part of the river is where I often sit and relax after a good or bad day at the office! This painting and the one in my previous post were both painted using Royal Talens Rembrandt artists watercolours - they are a delight to use and may very well become my favourites! Those Dutch know a thing or two about paint you know ;) Happy sketching and painting everyone :)

River Great Ouse in flood, watercolour on Arches 300gsm/140lb Rough, 23cm x 31cm/9" x 12"

The meadow and the bull

We went for a long family dog walk across the local meadows last Sunday, taking our chance in between the recent showers we have been having here of late. The walk hugs the river for most of the course and the river itself divides into several branches and the local council have kindly provided lots of wooden bridges to cross between the islands as well as stiles and cattle gates (or kissing gates as we call them) to stop the local herds from wandering too much. We are quite used to walking around the edges of some of the fields to avoid the bulls but we did have a rather stressful encounter with one particular bovine who decided to walk over towards us and so we all made our way through the gate a little quicker than normal lol!

The views across the meadows are truly lovely and there is one particular spot where you can see the spire or tower of three village churches, each belonging to a separate village. This watercolour is a view across the River Great Ouse, looking from Houghton Meadow towards the church of Hemingford Abbots whose spire seemed to puncture the threatening looking sky that hung across this low lying countryside. Happy weekend to you all :)

Hemingford Abbots, Jackson's watercolour on Arches 300gsm/140lb Not, 180mm x 260mm/7" x 10"

Down by the river

It's been quite a busy week at work with one of our massive team of three off on holiday and the other 'working from home' - yeah right, lol. So that left me. Oh well, I still managed to get away early today and stop off by the river in town on the way home to do a quick sketch. I keep promising myself to do more drawing like this so this was a good start towards fulfilling that promise. I used a 3B watersoluble graphite pencil, not in my Moleskine this time, but in a small square format cartridge sketchbook which opens out perfectly flat to allow you to work across the pages as I did here. One day I'll manage to sketch fast enough to capture one of the many canoeists or rowers that use this calm stretch of water to practice :)

River Great Ouse, watersoluble graphite, 4" x 8"