NEW Oil Painting. “From Maiden Castle in the Mist.”

I had the idea for this painting while walking home from a couple of hours sketching on Maiden Castle. The weather was appalling. I was exhausted enough to keep walking towards that long promised cup of coffee. I don’t know why I didn’t take a photograph, maybe I forgot the camera. I was walking back towards Dorchester along the south side of the ramparts, and I looked to the left in time to see the sun breaking through the mist.  From that vantage point I felt nearer the sun than the farm and the dark trees. A good sight on a bleak day.

I thought about it a lot, and decided to go back. I drew the same fields and trees, under different conditions, and tried to remember the sky from that brief moment.

The result is a little abstract, and focussed on the essential features of the landscape. But because I had to rely on memory a bit, I didn’t swamp it with too much detail and kept sight of the original rather romantic idea.  

 All the drawing I have been doing has started to influence my painting in other ways. The trees are my favourite part of this picture, and would definitely have been different a few months ago. I also feel the landscape itself is changing my work. Normally I love to build up a surface with lots of coloured brush marks, (see Portfolio page!) but these fields have forced me to paint flat areas of colour. I started with thin paint and a lot of medium and scraped it back off when I changed my mind about something. I scraped some of the top layer away to show darker colour.  I also used Zest it Glazing Medium to build up transparent layers in the sky and to show the light coming down over the fields.

Happy New Year.

This gallery contains 7 photos.

New Year energy, though weather unhelpful. First drawing day of the week, and I was confined to looking out of the front room window. High winds made venturing outside feel rather too dangerous. Pets thought me unhinged or expecting visitors. … Continue reading →

New drawings from old.

I have been thinking for some time, how to work up my Castle Park sketches into something presentable. I have a great book of drawings on cheap cartridge paper which has been carted around and up and down Maiden Castle.

The fact that it is a rough book frees me to work quicky and to try things out, but what do I do with the really great ones?

These pictures are part of the answer.

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The new drawings are on watercolour paper in graphite and poster colour. The lines are stylised and confident, without losing the spontaneity of my original sketch. I love the brightness of the paint, like a child’s untroubled view of Dorchester and the world.  

The View from Castle Park.

A sweep of green that offers many pictures.                                                                             Zig-zag fields, rolling hills below the line of the Ridgeway, changing colour through the year and through the day.

Outrageously taken for granted by me as a teenager, always on the way to somewhere else.

Quiet, subtle, ever changing but resilient.

The scenic wallpaper of my life, celebrated by me for the first time.

Painting in the Dorset County Museum concludes.

Day Three in the museum.

Thursday is a bit of a blur. It was a rush to the finish. With two hours to go I had to decide what I was going to put in and what had to be left alone. It was quite exhilarating. My decision making speeded up. One of my favourite bits is the contrast between those little lime green trees and the pink field. 

It was a split second decision to put them in,  but I wanted to pull the eye down to the bottom of the picture. I don’t know how I chose the colour, they took less than a minute, but they really worked.

All the drawing I have been doing for the past five months was a big help. I knew how to describe the trees and the skyline with a few marks. I had developed a language I suppose to talk about the landscape with.

 I got a real buzz out of painting that first thick dark line under a field boundary. It suddenly changed the whole picture, pulled that part of it forward, and made the colours sing out against it.

Painting an 8 ft mural in the Dorset County Museum has been fun. Thanks so much to all who showed up to support me in this crazy enterprise! I met some interesting people, from around here, and from as far away as America and New Zealand. I had some brilliant conversations about the Ridgeway and about my work.

Bank Holiday Monday was particularly good. I think that a certain proportion of the world is going to be interested in your work, and a certain proportion of any crowd. Some ‘Ridgeway Voices’ visitors were there to see art, some to see me, some to see the geographical area celebrated, some to hear their friends interviewed.  If you increase traffic, you increase the number of visitors who really get into it. People were standing behind me and watching before I realised they were there, they were taking postcards, promising to go to my website, it was easy! A small crowd  can make you work harder for less reward, but the percentage of it that is interested in you is the same. I think my Dad told me that.

If you came in early and want to see how it all ended, or if you haven’t seen it yet, you can see the finished mural in the exhibition until 24 June.

Finished painting at the Dorset County Museum!

Hope you like it! Today was incredibly busy, and the picture only finally came together at the last moment, with the dark lines around the fields. I’m really proud of the trees and the sky. I will write more tomorrow, but I wanted to thank everybody for their support.  The painting can still be seen at the Ridgeway Voices exhibition until 24 June.

This is how it looked earlier in the day.

Painting at the Dorset County Museum continues.

Day Two. Big wall, big brushes.

After such a positive start yesterday, I’m feeling good, until I realise how much there is still to do.  Time to bring out the big brushes. First I tackled the big yellow field that reaches down to the bottom corner.

 

Painting the top fields in their different greens pulled the whole thing up towards the skyline and started to make it look more convincing. I added a bit of gel medium to stop the paint feeling so flat, the big brushes made me feel like I was decorating.

Visitors started to talk to me about the location as well as the colour, which I took to be a good sign. I could tell them that if you follow the yellow field up and to the right, you end up on Maiden Castle.  There may have been more local people in today than yesterday. The exhibition was busy again, though a little less crazy.

 

I’m not totally sure about the red, it works better at the bottom than the top. The room was getting a bit dark by the time I painted it at 4 pm. So, progress, but much still to be done. Thursday is all about zigzags, trees, and glaze medium.