Light to Dark, Dark to Light

I think it's Ron Ranson,one of my all-time favourite artists, who suggests the use of Burnt Umber for tonal sketches. It is also nice, as in this case, to use for a complete monochrome painting. It has a superb range of tonal values that equals that of either ivory or lamp black, two other great pigments that I'm starting to use a little more. And what's to stop YOU putting black in your palette ? I know I have ! Oops, perhaps I lost a few more followers there ?!? Just in case you're worrying that I may be going through my dark period ... well don't, I'm not ... well not just yet anyway ! ... but have a chuckle at someone who I think may be going through his  .... LOL.

The Fast Show- Johnny Nice Painter


I hope you are all keeping well. Happy St Patrick's Day ... and of course happy painting too to you all :)

'And You And I', Monochrome with Burnt Umber Watercolour and BrushPens on Fabriano5 140lb HP, A5

 And to make up for my tardiness in posting and commenting, a couple more recent pieces for you, both primarily watercolours of course! The first is purely from imagination, the second is from memory.

'Slippery Slope', Watercolour and Watercolour Pencil on Fabriano5 140lb HP, A5

Hemingford Abbots, Watercolour and BrushPens on Fabriano5 140lb HP, A5

Seventeen come January

I forgot to mention in my last post, I recently turned seventeen ... for the third time! The stresses and strains from work related matters are quickly beginning to fade now as my company's latest product finally moves out of development and into full production. The snow has disappeared completely now and the white, snow leaden skies of late have given way to the beautiful and clear, cobalt skies of late winter. Spring is still a few weeks off, but it soon will be here, bringing forth new growth, and of course, from a personal and selfish point of view, the chance to get out there and have some plein air fun again :)

While I 'm waiting for the better weather, I have been playing around with various papers using small sets of student quality watercolour paints and pencils in an attempt to get the contents of my sketch bag whittled down to something I can physically carry LOL. I'm beginning to move away from good old cream coloured blocks of Arches, towards spiral bound pads of bright white papers like Fabriano Classico 5 HP (50% cotton rag) and gorgeous Winsor & Newton Artists CP, both of which seem to handle any wash I throw at them ... not literally of course !

Happy painting !

True blue

The willows in winter

On thin ice

You take the high road

Autumn finally arrives

The weather here has been pretty dismal; lots of wind and rain and of course it's now a little too dark to get any after-work sketching done :( However, I have been trying to get some reference photographs to keep me busy over the coming blustery autumn and chilly winter months. This one is based on a photo I took on a recent dog walk with that now infamous show-stealing canine model himself :) It started life as a watercolour which I subsequently ran under the tap - twice! At this point I decided to give up with watercolour and get out the Kremer and Sennelier soft pastels to see where that took me. But that looked awful too lol, so I dissolved much of the dry pastel with water and then finished off a few highlights in the foreground with dry pastel and some of the tree branches with dry and wet watercolour pencil. A true multimedia experience ... or perhaps a bit of a mess. You decide :)

Happy painting, be it wet or dry!

Autumn woodland walk, mixed media on Arches 300gsm/140lb Rough, 23cm x 31cm/9" x 12"

The return of Moley

I've decided to take a bit of a break from big paintings and get back to what I truly enjoy the most - sketching in pen, pencil and watercolour. We made a trip to Ely yesterday and although it was a little overcast here in the East of England, the sun did appear long enough to allow us to see the magnificent cathedral in all its glory. Art materials were purchased as usual lol: a tube of white gouache, a stencil brush that looked useful (?), two pipettes for re-wetting paints, yet another Lamy fountain pen, and a pocket watercolour Moleskine.

I really blow hot and cold over Moleskines but I know a lot of sketching artists out there in blogland absolutely adore them. I dislike their waxy paper sketchbooks as much as they dislike my watercolour media, although they are good for pen, graphite and coloured pencil but I prefer all-media cartridge paper like in the Daler Rowney Ebony. The Moleskine watercolour sketchbooks, on the other hand, are very nice, but only available in landscape orientation - come on Moleskine, listen to your customers! Nethertheless, I decided to make a start in mine with a few sketches done in watercolour and watercolour pencils, using mobile phone photos for reference. I call it pseudo plein aire! Hope you are all having a great weekend.

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.

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

Middle Beach, Studland, watercolour pencil, Derwent A5 sketchbook

Secret garden

Over the next few days, my wife and step-daughters are camping a few miles out in the Cambridgeshire countryside and taking in the sights and sounds of the eclectic local arts festival that is  The Secret Garden Party. Whilst they're all away, I'll be sorting out my art materials for the family summer holiday in Dorset here in the UK the week after next. I may also get around to a spot of much needed real gardening myself, if only to mow the lush meadow at the front of the house!

I thought these small studies of fruit and vegetables I did last winter were quite appropriate for this post. Hopefully, I may also get around to doing something new over the weekend but this may be my last post until I get back from holiday. Before you all start to weep LOL, I do intend to do lots of sketching there, and hopefully a couple of full paintings and if I get the chance and manage to get a decent cellphone signal, I may even post while I'm there! Bye bye for now :)

Finding a bargain in the city

I've been on a nice long relaxing break recently; with the coincidence of Easter, the Royal Wedding and May Bank Holiday making  two long weekends, and the addition of a few extra days, we've been able to take a well-earned long break from our hectic jobs. The problem is that we've also managed to make quite a few trips to local towns over the break and as you all know ... that means art shops! More on that later.

We visited Ely a few days ago; the journey from Huntingdon taking us through some of the prettiest parts of Cambridgeshire past shocking yellow fields of rapeseed (sniff, sniff) and giving us the most spectacular view of the cathedral which is visible across the flat landscape from quite a distance out. It is for these spectacular views that it got the title 'Ship of the Fens' and the inclusion on a Pink Floyd album cover. Before the Fens were drained, Ely was an inland island and a county in its own right named the Isle of Ely until 1965.

After parking up, we felt a bit peckish and so we decided to treat ourselves to a delicious light afternoon meal in the beautiful walled gardens of the Almonry tearooms, behind which the awesome stone mass of the cathedral rises. It really is a beautiful backdrop and, though I wouldn't class myself as a cathedral expert, this one must be up there with the best. The tranquility of the scene was only disturbed occasionally by the low pitched rumble of the local trains making their way across the Fens between Cambridge and Peterborough and a noisy, low flying and large military plane rudely reminded us that we were quite close to one of the county's many air bases. 

We love to walk around the city - it is a city because of the cathedral but must be one of the smallest in the UK - and strolled through the local park on the slopes below the cathedral as we made our way down to the riverfront. The fields in the park were home to what my wife thinks were Icelandic ponies and also one of the most amazing trees I've ever seen. The ponies seemed to like using the long, twisting, low hanging branches as back scratchers! On the way back to the car park we did a little bit of shopping at the local market and I went into the art shop for a browse ... fatal. I was delighted to see that this wasn't going to cost much as they were selling assorted bags of 18 Daler Rowney watercolour pencils for forty percent of their RRP so I carefully selected two bags. Oh yes, and I bought a couple more sketch books too :)

I was delighted with my purchase when I realised that for £20 I had almost a full set of the pencils with just a few duplicates and only need another seven to complete the set of thiry-six available colours. They first seemed to be a lttle weaker than some other brands I use when first wetted on the paper but then they seem to liven up to give very rich pure colours after drying. Personally, I love them and think they may become my favourites. All of the colours are sensibly named and match popular watercolour pigment names.

So, yesterday I played around with my new pencils, trying various techniques before I finally worked on a complete sketch. This is just A6 and based on an earlier pastel sketch I did. It's purely from imagination but I'd like to try working on a bigger scale on a real world plein-air drawing/painting in the near future.


That's it for now. Back to work on Tuesday so I may be a little while before posting again :(

The Ancient

I don't know the age of this wonderful tree but I bet it was around at the time of the English Civil War when Cromwell roamed this county and perhaps some of his army would have stopped here for shelter from the strong Eastern winds that sweep across from the North Sea. Cromwell was born and educated here in Huntingdon; he later moved to Ely and his battle headquarters were in nearby St Ives so lots of the local streets and buildings carry his name.

I drew (painted ?) this on the spot, using mainly watercolour pencils , building it up in layers, activating some of the pigment with a waterbrush and applying dry pencil or wet pencil to areas to produce more intense colour. I'm quite happy with this one.

OLD TREE, HOUGHTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE