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.