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.

First proper plein air pic

Finally, things have calmed down a bit so I had time to pootle off with my new pochade box. For some reason, I chose to go down by the river Wey near Godalming. It's a gorgeous spot and I've always loved it, but it was only when I was setting up that it properly occurred to me that I have no idea how to do water, or fields, and my tree record is pretty poor too.

 

 

It's not great obviously, nor even good,  but it's not  utterly hideous either I don't think, not for a first go. I had no idea initially what I was doing, I was hopping from water to trees, from detail to broad strokes, from panic to pleasure. Mostly panic.  It's so so different than from a photo. There is no nice neat framing device, and the darned light kept changing. Things looked oddly luminously green and lurid when the sun came out, and then everything dulled down under a cloud.

And people! nosy people! I hated the whole thing for the first twenty minutes and just wanted to give up and go home, but then I thought feck it, just do it and quit worrying. Then I had a great time.

 

 

 

The spot was chosen not for composition, but for shade and a bit of nice grass. My daughters had come along with me, and read away while I painted. We brought a rug, a picnic and a beer - there are many worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

 

Practising for Pochade box

I'll probably go out on the common with my box when it's done. In the meantime I'm taking photos of the place on our morning walk and hoping the practice might help.

 

It'll be interesting to see how I do from real life. I might eventually get the hang of trees and bushes. I'm hoping I'll be less faffy and blobby with my brushstrokes. This went through a pohase where it looked okay... and then I kept going... .

 

 

Nearly have a Pochade box.

P has built me a Pochade box! It's done apart from I don't have a thingy to mount it on a tripod yet. I'm going to be forced to go paint outdoors!! I'll have no excuse soon. Maybe I can break a leg or something :-/

 

The two panels come out, attach to the sides to form shelves, leaving the palette in the middle:

 

 

Isn't that bloody clever! He's fab at making things. I gave it an indoor try out , balanced on a stool:

( the box, not me)

 

It was just a quicky trial of the box, not an attempt to do a proper pic.

 

 

I'm dead chuffed with it, but I also had a dream where I wandered around a farm with the box looking for a place I could paint and it all going very very wrong!

 

 

Some summer sketches

Well I have been painting, but I've been painting the exterior woodwork on the house which is no fun whatsoever. I did a rubbish job on it anyway, and managed to get impossible to remove paint on legs, shorts, dog, path and plants. I've been keeping up sketching though and have finished pad number 3. Ta Da. That's the end of the Moleskin. The long format didn't suit me, although, it was okay for this foxglove:

 

I need to leave home more often, I've been sketching looking out of doors and windows:

 

 

And I've been sketching bits of rooms:

 

 

And I've been sketching any flowers in the garden:

 

I get a bit fiddly and faffy too easily, so sometimes I have to try and force myself to be looser:

 

I've given one of my daughters some watercolours, so she was sitting out in the garden sketching with me last night, while my other daughter was out there reading with us. Nice way to spend an evening.