If only all houses were plain modernist blocks with no details whatsoever

We were in Amsterdam last week for half term which was fab. Brilliant city to walk around with so so many stunning leafy canals lined with gorgeous tall narrow houses. Some were astonishingly  narrow , much less than 2 meters wide, and some were a bit tipsy and lopsided. Our apartment had great big windows overlooking a canal so I had a bit of an attempt at sketching.

I was  painstakingly slow trying to draw the buildings even though they were mainly hidden behind trees.

And this took more brow furrowing tongue protruding concentration than I've ever put into any thing before! And it still looks boketty and crooked! I could of course claim that they were exact drawings  of the city's older architecture, ahem. 

More sky practice

Today is stormy rain windy and horrid. I wanted to paint so I tried a photo I'd taken up on Puttenham Common. I walk there a lot these days, the sky is huge and fab up there. I keep getting caught in downpours.

I tried to limit myself to a short time, to see if I could keep some of the fun of painting the real thing. Not great, not shockingly awful. I should really go up there and paint, but to go there for a dog walk, and then go again to paint takes just too too much time. Aren't excuses fab. 

Back to basics and cloud practices

Tree practice proved difficult as the trees in the garden are too close to simplify and as I don't want to end up painting individual leaves, so I thought I'd turn to cloud practice. We don't have great big vistas, more's the pity, so these are glimpsed up between trees.

Figuring it would be difficult, I decided to just do monotone sketches and concentrate just on tonal values. Bit of a rubbish start, but so what. 

It's wonderful just using one colour: a) you don't care how it turns out so you are not precious b) quick set up and clean up c) you can squeeze in little sketch in a spare fifteen min or so and d) hopefully by not thinking about colour, you can think about something else i.e brushstrokes, paint texture, lunch. 

I may well be deluding myself, but I'm seeing progress here at the end of a week of various attempts. 

I tried some colour then and lost all that simplicity. Mind you, it was a complicated, ever changing, temperamental autumnal sky. It is quite mental trying to look, mix and paint when the subject is moving away and morphing into something else. 

This was looking south, so things were a bit backlit. I never really thought about directional cloud lighting before, now I'm continually looking at it and boring P about it when we are walking.

Attempting to run long long before I've got walking sorted.

Another ridiculous picture to attempt in terms of complexity. For some reason I wanted to try it, probably because of the light -it was taken on an early morning walk through an oyster farm of all things - but it was beyond my abilities.

Which is not to say I didn't love the trying. I did. And I'm learning. Among other issues,  I'm much too impatient for this type of thing, the drawing and perspective etc needed way more thought and attention, but I was dying to get going. It's overworked and murky in places, but there is something about the middle bit that I think slightly works for early morning light, so that's something. 

The study books have arrived - Art of the Twentieth Century - even a quick glace at the intro had me frantically rummaging through the dictionary, so I imagine painting will be pushed aside a bit. If I do still paint I'll try and sensibly paint simpler subjects. 

Some Statuary

I don't know why I decided to do this pic, I suppose even though I know it was  not the most suitable, but I liked the golden glow in the water of the basin. So worth a go, anyway I'm  sort of in the mood to try anything at all as soon enough the study will start again and I'll probably end up not painting for ages.

I drew the fountain a bit lopsidedly, and it is weird compositionally, but the right hand foliage isn't my worst, and I quite like my pillars blending in to the shadows a bit. 

The pic was taken looking down a long avenue in the Boboli gardens in Florence last October. We paid the entrance fee meaning of course to walk about attempting  to be all cultured etc, but actually, we found the first bit of grass, a lovely lawn in front of the palace,  and all fell sound asleep in the late afternoon sun. Lovely day. 

Second attempt with first boardwalk

The more I looked it the more I just didn't like my first shadows, so I sort of smeared white spirit on the path bit,  rubbed it, and left myself with a fine blue mess to work on.

I think that's a bit better. When I started this painting malarky I bought short sharpish flat brushes for still life, I'm not sure they are the best for landscapes though, bit cartoony and edgy sometimes when you are looking for soft. Therefore I have ordered some filberts, partly because it's one of those lovely words that you just have to keep repeating, filbert filbert filbert. Must be time for my afternoon nap. 

Boardwalks again, different direction

I wasn't happy with my shadows on the boardwalk yesterday, so thought I'd do another similar pic and see if I could improve. It's a better view of the boardwalk, but not such  nice trees I don't think. 

I prefer the shadow, but it's still not what I was trying to get. Actually, I have no idea what I'm trying to get which may be apart of the problem. I don't quite know what kind of style I'm aiming for, I'm hoping a nice one will just magically appear one day. One of the things I'd like to do better is a balance between thick paint and washier paint, but I keep going over areas and therefore lose any areas of thinner paint. But then it is quite nice to smear on nice thick stuff. 

Blue Boardwalks

We are fabulously lucky around here for fantastic walks within a really short distance. We go to the Moat once or twice a week, where there are boardwalks out over a nature reserve/wetland/bog. The colours can be spectacular sometimes, with vivid bright blue, or ultramarine, or slate gray water, and sometimes the boardwalks look bright blue.

Honest - they can look that blue. Not that cartoony, not that jaggedy, but really, that blue. 

Not quite Tate Modern

I popped up to London to see the Malevich exhibition in the Tate ( extremely interesting) and took a photo from a balcony. The shadow of the huge chimney was falling rather dramatically on the scene below. It was a daft subject to try and paint,  but I just liked the idea of giving it a go.

There's a huge amount of blankish space, and absolutely nothing is in focus, plus the shadow makes the clump of birches look like they have a sharp corner plus plus plus - still, I loved doing it. I realised I haven't been painting because now that the hols are here, so are my daughters, and for some reason, I'm quite uncomfortable painting with anyone around. Anyway, I locked myself in the end room and told everyone to pretend I didn't exist. which worked apart from approximately 57 milliion interruptions.

Trying a tree again

I quite liked sitting outside doing the tree, so I tried again this morning. The garden is tricky for a good pic, lots of green, lots of up close finickity detail. I walked about for an age trying to find something that looked good composition wise, but then decided that it didn't matter really if all I was doing was tree practice, so I just sat in the shade and went for it.

I got a bit lost in tree detail, one minute I'm looking at overall shapes and the next, I'm trying to do a goddam leaf. I think the grass/shadow is better than the last attempt though, so that's okay.

If I'm to keep going with this plein air business, I'd really want not to end up with paint on my jeans, my hands and my eyebrows. I came inside with green lips, how did that happen!

Tree practice and unhelpful weather

I thought it would be good to just practice doing a tree now and then; if I ever go off out and paint outdoors, it just may come in handy to know what to do when confronted by one in the wild. The Mulberry in the garden seemed a good place to start. Sun out, paints out, hopes up.

Almost immediately the sun went in! how mean was that. I had sketched in the shadow on the grass, but it then disappeared, as did any helpful highlights on the tree, as did the contrast between the tree and the hedge behind. Therefore there was no subject except some green. So lo and behold, I did a picture of some green. 

Max the dog wasn't impressed, he sat beside me pulling up moss with his teeth and depositing it on my pic. 

Finally dug out the oils again.

I had no idea what to paint after not painting for so long - I want to be able to paint everything!... but where to start!! I was sort of beating myself up about not going off doing the real thing - i.e go off and do Plein air - but I just cannot make that sort of time at the mo. Instead I figure if I want to learn landscape stuff, well then it's just going to have to be from photos. I know that painting from photos is deeply frowned on by proper Plein air painters, but if you are getting experience mixing colours, applying paint or again, just looking , well that must be of value.

This was taken up  at the top of the road at Guinea common,.The dog kept leaping in disturbing the water when I wanted it to be beautifully still. P was there flinging sticks in, aren't family great!

 

I spent an age doing the bottom bit of water, I just couldn't mix pinks and purples for a pond. It was only when I stopped thinking of it as a pond and just looked at patches of colour that I managed it. I just applied lots of blobs for each patch,  stood back, and it had sort of worked.

 

P says it is lacking a focal point, the kids have suggested a periscope...again - isn't familial support just wonderful.

Garden bits on the tablet.

I've finished studying for this year, but of course rather than being released into a life of blissful freedom, I've been released into catching up with all the stuff I've ignored while manically writing horrid essays. Hence, I've been painting the kitchen, battling with the Laurel hedge( it won), battling with the weeds ( they won) and attempting to get two daughters ready for their prom next week. What very silly things proms are!
So up to this I haven't been painting at all, but I kept up a small bit of sketching on the tablet. It's darned quick and handy for just little exercises.

It's not something that is done for the results ( obviously) , more for the practice - it's very  useful for just thinking about tones and colours, or just looking at light - this is a bit of late afternoon sun at the end of the garden. And this was just done sitting in the bay window.

I'd never attempt to paint something like that - but it's nice to try and do something.

some tablets

I thought I'd better put something in my blog before it died of boredom and gave up on life. I've  not been able to paint at all, I'm studying a course in Renaissance art for a Humanities degree at the moment - it is fantastic and fascinating and I adore it to bits, but it is quite incredibly time consuming.

This is a sketch on a tablet ( Nexus 7) of Holbein's portrait of Sir Thomas More. I've convinced myself that by sketching the paintings I'm studying, I'll learn something about them. Sketching on a tablet is new to me, this is attempt no 2. I'm using a free sketching app, which is probably quite basic, but is easy enough to get the hang of. 

I thought this course would be all Florentine Madonnas and such, but we are also looking at Netherlandish art. This is a sketch of poor Mary Magdalene from Rogier van der Weyden's Deposition. 

She is contorted and distracted with grief - in the original anyway. I'm made her very grey. Okay, back to the books.