Happy painting.
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| Weymouth Bay, watercolour and fineliner pen on Saunders Waterford 140lb Rough, 10x11", 25x28cm |
Showing posts with label Dorset. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dorset. Show all posts
Saturday, 30 June 2012
Pier pressure
No moody monochromes this time ... just lovely rich Daler Rowney tube colour! This is based on a photo I took on our recent trip to Weymouth in Dorset on the Southwest coast. The long stone pier used by local fishermen, that makes it way out almost to the middle of the bay, the blustery coastal sky and the distant shoreline studded with steep chalk cliffs, all help to make this a pleasing composition.
Happy painting.
Happy painting.
Friday, 19 August 2011
Ruin with a view
Following on from the recent sketches I did, and also from the reference photographs I took, whilst on holiday in Dorset, here is another BIG oil painting of a very beautiful place. Corfe Castle was originally built during the reign of William 1, shortly after the Norman Conquest, but most of what can be seen today is from the reigns of later kings. Rather than go the way of many castles and just fall into disrepair, it was in fact victim of a previous period of unrest in british history and so is perhaps an apposite choice given the recent happenings here in the UK.
The castle was actually demolished by Cromwell's engineers, but not completely thankfully, in 1646 after it was taken from the Royalists following a long siege by the Parliamentarians. I'm a bit of a Cromwell fan, mainly out of pride for his local roots here in Huntingdon, but this bit of history came as a bit of a shock to me. Thank goodness his men did not raze it to the ground.
The view here is from what I think is called the inner bailey (a good name for this post perhaps lol). It shows the inner motte/mound and the ruins of the keep, some of the remaining inner battlements and an inner gatehouse. All of this sits atop a much bigger motte/mound, surrounded by a massive outer bailey and the main battlements, and lies in a natural dip in the Purbeck Hills. The picturesque village of Corfe Castle, also famous for its more peaceful connections with Enid Blyton, lies in and around the dip and along the roads which climb the hill to the South of the castle. The view from the top, within the keep itself, is absolutely beautiful, looking down on the village in one direction and across the Purbeck hills to Poole Harbour in another. They certainly knew a lot about the importance of 'location, location, location' a thousand years ago!
Happy painting and drawing to you all.
And for those who would like to see a little more of the area, albeit in a virtual way, here is the view as you approach the castle from the South, courtesy of Ye Olde Google Maps.
View Larger Map
The castle was actually demolished by Cromwell's engineers, but not completely thankfully, in 1646 after it was taken from the Royalists following a long siege by the Parliamentarians. I'm a bit of a Cromwell fan, mainly out of pride for his local roots here in Huntingdon, but this bit of history came as a bit of a shock to me. Thank goodness his men did not raze it to the ground.
The view here is from what I think is called the inner bailey (a good name for this post perhaps lol). It shows the inner motte/mound and the ruins of the keep, some of the remaining inner battlements and an inner gatehouse. All of this sits atop a much bigger motte/mound, surrounded by a massive outer bailey and the main battlements, and lies in a natural dip in the Purbeck Hills. The picturesque village of Corfe Castle, also famous for its more peaceful connections with Enid Blyton, lies in and around the dip and along the roads which climb the hill to the South of the castle. The view from the top, within the keep itself, is absolutely beautiful, looking down on the village in one direction and across the Purbeck hills to Poole Harbour in another. They certainly knew a lot about the importance of 'location, location, location' a thousand years ago!
Happy painting and drawing to you all.
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| Corfe Castle, oil on canvas, 12" x 16" |
And for those who would like to see a little more of the area, albeit in a virtual way, here is the view as you approach the castle from the South, courtesy of Ye Olde Google Maps.
View Larger Map
Saturday, 13 August 2011
The Big Picture - tweaked
Following some expert advice from Roger and Keith (thank you both very much guys), I've done a few tweaks to this one. The main tweak is to the group of figures. The heights of the two girls and the relative proportions of them and between them was all wrong (stop rushing Michael). So I went back to the original reference photo and pretty much redid this section of the painting, including the reflections, which I'm still not happy with, although that's more to do with technique (or lack of it!) than anything else. I also adjusted the values and colours of the distant hills to soften them a little. Overall, I think it works pretty well now as a finished painting and I'm ready to start on my next one while this dries! Any suggestions for the next piece are welcome, although I do have a particular subject in mind already :)
I used W&N Artisan oil paints and long flat hog brushes throughout. My palette comprised French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Indian Red, Viridian, Yellow Ochre and Raw Umber with tiny amounts of Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue, Lemon Yellow and Permanent Alizarin Crimson and bucket loads of Titanium White. I used a tiny amount of oil painting medium for some of the fine details.
I apologise for my later-than-usual responses to comments. Last night we went with friends to Newmarket in Suffolk for a spot of horse racing and betting, but mainly to see the one and only Tom Jones perform live. I watched him as a kid in the 60s with my Mum and Dad so this was truly magical for me. He still has an absolutely awesome voice and looks great - not bad considering he turned seventy last year!
I used W&N Artisan oil paints and long flat hog brushes throughout. My palette comprised French Ultramarine, Cobalt Blue, Indian Red, Viridian, Yellow Ochre and Raw Umber with tiny amounts of Cadmium Yellow Pale Hue, Lemon Yellow and Permanent Alizarin Crimson and bucket loads of Titanium White. I used a tiny amount of oil painting medium for some of the fine details.
I apologise for my later-than-usual responses to comments. Last night we went with friends to Newmarket in Suffolk for a spot of horse racing and betting, but mainly to see the one and only Tom Jones perform live. I watched him as a kid in the 60s with my Mum and Dad so this was truly magical for me. He still has an absolutely awesome voice and looks great - not bad considering he turned seventy last year!
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Friday, 12 August 2011
The Big Picture
Well, after weeks, nay months, of talking about it I finally got around to painting a BIG picture. Yay, I hear you all exclaim lol. Ok, so it's not BIG BIG, but you try cycling with half a door under your arm! This is based on a gouache sketch I posted a week ago, which in turn is based on a photo I took on my recent holiday in Dorset. I used both the sketch and photo for reference.
The scene is the view from the rocky beach on the southwest of Brownsea Island, the biggest of three small islands which lie in Poole Harbour. The island is famous for being the place where Lord Baden Powell set up the first ever scout camp in 1907 and also for being one of the only refuges here in the UK for the native Red Squirrel (and no, we didn't see any, disappointingly). In the distance is Furzey Island which houses an oil drilling rig amongst the deep forestation, but I left this off as it did nothing for the composition :). Rising behind in the distance is the Purbeck hills, a ridge of chalk hills, much of it heathland, which once continued to the Isle of Wight until the sea finally broke through to fill Poole Harbour at the end of the last ice age. From other view points on the island, you can also see across to a narrow peninsular of low lying land called Sandbanks, one of the most expensive places to live in the world! A very beautiful and inspiring place.
Just to prove it's mine, here it is on the easel. The steel rule came in handy to check the freehand painted horizon was level - which I assure you it is now, although my wonky pictures may not help to convince you! I come from a long line of picture straighteners and so a wonky horizon would just not do. It would be the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard to my eyes! Evidence of one of my other passions - attempting to play the guitar - is just visible to the left.
And finally, here is one I took at some ridiculous time of the day in poor light. This shows the initial sketch which helped me to establish the composition and check general tonal values. I did this the night before the main part of the painting. Although it's not strictly an underpainting, it helped a lot, although I had to almost completely redraw the group of people who had appeared to have grown in size since the gouache sketch. The actual real painting took about three and a bit hours in one session (interrupted only by dog walking duties) so I'm going to call this Alla Prima :-P.
Happy weekend to you all, Michael.
The scene is the view from the rocky beach on the southwest of Brownsea Island, the biggest of three small islands which lie in Poole Harbour. The island is famous for being the place where Lord Baden Powell set up the first ever scout camp in 1907 and also for being one of the only refuges here in the UK for the native Red Squirrel (and no, we didn't see any, disappointingly). In the distance is Furzey Island which houses an oil drilling rig amongst the deep forestation, but I left this off as it did nothing for the composition :). Rising behind in the distance is the Purbeck hills, a ridge of chalk hills, much of it heathland, which once continued to the Isle of Wight until the sea finally broke through to fill Poole Harbour at the end of the last ice age. From other view points on the island, you can also see across to a narrow peninsular of low lying land called Sandbanks, one of the most expensive places to live in the world! A very beautiful and inspiring place.
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| Look Grandad! oil on canvas, 12" x 16" |
Just to prove it's mine, here it is on the easel. The steel rule came in handy to check the freehand painted horizon was level - which I assure you it is now, although my wonky pictures may not help to convince you! I come from a long line of picture straighteners and so a wonky horizon would just not do. It would be the visual equivalent of fingernails on a chalkboard to my eyes! Evidence of one of my other passions - attempting to play the guitar - is just visible to the left.
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| My first big oil painting |
And finally, here is one I took at some ridiculous time of the day in poor light. This shows the initial sketch which helped me to establish the composition and check general tonal values. I did this the night before the main part of the painting. Although it's not strictly an underpainting, it helped a lot, although I had to almost completely redraw the group of people who had appeared to have grown in size since the gouache sketch. The actual real painting took about three and a bit hours in one session (interrupted only by dog walking duties) so I'm going to call this Alla Prima :-P.
Happy weekend to you all, Michael.
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| Initial raw umber sketch |
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Extreme plein air sketching
These are my last offerings for you from my week's holiday here in the beautiful county of Dorset :( The first one was a very bizarre experience indeed for me. I thought that sitting in a quiet country lane at 8:00 in the morning wouldn't attract too much attention but I happened to pick a place where the owner of a thatched cottage, just to the right of the one I sketched, happened to be an amateur painter too! He stood and chatted with me and watched me make almost every mark. It could have been a horrible experience but it wasn't and now I have no fear of onlookers and also know how expensive it is to buy hay for horses LOL! The second one was done under much less pressure while I was relaxing on one of the National Trust beaches in Studland, a strip of loveliness along the Dorset coast and a fabulous place to sketch. I just threw my watercolour pencils onto my beach rug as I worked!
Have a lovely weekend everyone, Michael.
Here is an almost identical view of the actual place on Google Maps. Judging by the lovely show of daffodils in the grass verges, I would say the Google car took this photograph around April time. If you pan the camera to the right, you can see the thatched cottage, the left hand side of which was the the home of the onlooker that watched me paint! If you pan the camera further to the right, you can see the rough track where I sat and sketched.
View Larger Map
Have a lovely weekend everyone, Michael.
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| Ulwell cottage, Watercolour, Derwent A5 sketchbook |
Here is an almost identical view of the actual place on Google Maps. Judging by the lovely show of daffodils in the grass verges, I would say the Google car took this photograph around April time. If you pan the camera to the right, you can see the thatched cottage, the left hand side of which was the the home of the onlooker that watched me paint! If you pan the camera further to the right, you can see the rough track where I sat and sketched.
View Larger Map
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| Middle Beach, Studland, watercolour pencil, Derwent A5 sketchbook |
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