Hanging around in graveyards

In what couldn't exactly be described as the most astonishing imaginative leap ever, we went from sketching in churchyards to sketching in a massive cemetery, Brookwood near Woking. It has some fantastic graves, especially the older Victorian ones: imposing statement mausoleums; Gothic monuments made all the more Gothic because of their crumbling disintegration; crosses of various shapes and sizes now leaning in various precarious directions, and a host of melodramatic angels, reaching, weeping, sighing and best of all, staying perfectly still for drawing purposes

I've tried the angels in oil before, somewhere down along the blog, but I think they suit watercolour quite well. 

  We had a couple of trips to Brookwood over the summer, my sister Sal came once, she forgot  her drawing stuff but brought the chocolate, so that worked.

It is a surprisingly lovely place to sit and sketch.

.

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. 

Angel in Brookwood Cemetery

I wanted to do something quicker and looser as I felt that yesterdays Angel was heading towards being a bit overworked.

They are interestingly androgynous; they have long frocks and wavy hair, but I assume they are males. His left hand is ready on his sword for some serious smiting should the occasion arise.  I  quite like my foreground grass for some reason.

Another Brookwood Angel

Well that's it, summer hols over, the girls are gone back to school and I have a quiet house. I much prefer having them around, painting or no painting.

It's fun doing this again, although also a big confusing. I ended up putting on more paint and going over more bits than I wanted to. I think the ideal must be to put it on right in the first place and then leave it.

Now that I have finished my degree and have a Ba ( hons) history, ( big very chuffed grin) , I should in theory have tons of painting time and be able to improve drastically. Except it seems I didn't quite get enough of sitting here sweating over essays, and I have decided to torture myself with another degree.  I've a month or so before it all starts again, and painting simmers away slowly in the background.

Angel , Brookwood Cemetery

 I had great notions that when I finally finished studying and the hols started that I'd have all the time in the world to paint, getting in days and days of much needed practice. Well so much for that. Instead the hols have been spent with my girls, we've had outings, trips, days in , days out, and lovely though it has all has been, I've hardly managed to grab a couple of hours to paint at all until now.

In an effort to kill two birds with one stone, i.e get in some sketching time and have a day out with my daughters, I brought them a cemetery, like you do. We went to Brookwood, It's a wonderful place, one of the largest cemeteries in Europe I think. It is vast and very beautiful to walk around in, with a strange mixture of wilderness and order. I love the old part with the angels and ferns,  and crumbling mausoleums, and graves part lost in the Rhododendrons and meadows with wildflowers. There was a butterfly collector swishing his net through the grasses while we were there. I sat and sketched while the girls explored.

This was done sitting in shorts on the most itchy grass ever, with ants. I know if you are being arty you are supposed to say that you worked up the painting from sketches done on location. I'm not entirely sure I saw the connection between the sketching and the painting, I saw utterly different colours while sketching. Although being there does make you more aware of bounced up light than photos seem to.

The gaps between painting efforts are too long, what is being learnt is being lost again I think.