New paintings and regular art updates.
I’m happy I took this photo some time ago early one morning in North Wales. I know the horizontal is off. I remember turning round, seeing this and snapping off a quick shot. The clouds seem to mirror the sea. I love the brilliant blue showing through. Memory of happier times…
There are of course beautiful places in the UK. This was the view of the river at Llangollen last year. Sometimes you can see people canoeing down through the rocks. On a sunny day that must be wonderful.
Llangollen is also the place to ride on steam trains that run on the preserved railway from the town along the valley. One day we might get there early enough to take a ride on it. There is also the Llangollen canal where you can take horse drawn barge rides across the canal viaduct.
The Welsh hills and mountains may be smaller than Nepal, but they are still beautiful.
Today’s prompt was Rooves (roofs). I looked out of all my windows and this view from the back of our house came closest to the remit. The sun was low and shining in as I drew this so I had to scoot across the bed so that I didn’t get completely dazzled. Most of the view is taken up with shrubs and trees. A few roofs in the distance, in silhouette. I managed to see more as the sun started to set, but it had to be done quickly. For our #bandofsketchers group.
Over there, beyond the houses, that’s how close the countryside is to this city. Wooded hills and farmers fields, the river Trent lies in that valley. Its the beginning of a great river that eventually empties out on the East Side of England near the mouth of the Humber after meandering through Nottinghamshire and I think Lincolnshire.
Our city does not sit in a conurbation. Its not surrounded by other towns in a massive urban sprawl. Yes there are towns nearby, but the gaps between them have not been filled in by housing and industrial development yet.
No great mountains or rolling plains nearby, but a gentle green land eventually leading to Welsh hills in one direction, or the flat lands of the East. The industrial Midlands South of us and the Peaks of Derbyshire in the North East and the Lancashire coast to the North West. A small geography lesson.
Today’s prompt was neighbourhood again, to give us the chance to expand (and possibly join up) with Sundays and Thursdays sketches.
This is the view across the road from my front food. Dark cloud lowering, sun hitting coloured leaves, painted in watercolours on black paper. I used white watercolour from a tube to try and cover the black paper. The other colours had to have white mixed in so that I could get the colours to show up on the black paper. I’m quite pleased with the result.
Autumn Acers, painting from when I visited Jodrell bank a few years ago. I was just browsing my photos and thought how nice it would be to sit in their dappled shade this morning. Its already about 27 Celsius inside the house this morning, and hotter still outside . I’m up early to do some college work, but the heat is getting to me. The humidity is the worst thing. We had torrential rain along with another massive thunderstorm last night and more is forecast for today. Luckily I live on a hill, but i thought my car would get washed away last night because the water cascading down the hill started to look like a river. I would not be surprised if properties further down on the flat main road got flooded! So, yes, dappled shade in the garden is what I might be seeking a bit later on when I have a break. I’ll be back later.
I’m working on a background to place my four images on fro my illustration course.
I will be cutting this up into four. I think the cat and the man will be at the bottom and the tree and the house at the top. My idea is that it will be November fifth. Bonfire night. The man is looking for the cat, which is scared. The house and the tree are going to be at the top. I will then colour round the blobs in black so that it’s nighttime. I might use fine liner pens to make the background black but with texture…
Got to decide portrait or landscape? What do you think?
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I posted this and other photos to my Instagram page and a friend commented that they looked like views out of an airplane window of the sea with islands in it.
I had concentrated on trying to see animals in the image. I can see a snarling bears head at the top left of this one for instance. But it reminded me of a holiday in Dorset one year. Driving up over the hills of the county, just before we dropped down towards Weymouth on the coast, the sky looked like mountainous islands with sea, bays and inlets running through them. I wish I’d been able to take a photo…
The sky had been a pale wash of pastel colours, the sun was setting, but because we were heading due south its glare was catching the sides of the clouds, they were lit up with gold on one side and greys on the other. The ‘sea’ was all pale pinks and blues. If we had not spent all day driving I would have pulled over. The image faded as we headed towards the caravan site, but it was the precursor of a lovely week away. Maybe I can find some old snaps of the places we visited.
I often look at cloudscapes and see landscapes.
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I was doing a couple of commissions of Etruria flint and bone mill. I had done one painting and a couple of people liked it and wanted copies. This is when I started using long thin canvases. It makes landscapes more interesting I think. Is it like letterbox TV? I don’t know. I’m hoping I can get back to doing things like this when we get back to something like normality.
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my attempt at the great wave after Hokusai.
I’m writing an assignment about the artist Hokusai and his ink and wood block print, The Great wave, or The Great Wave off Kanagawa produced around 1830. He had previously painted two other great waves in 1803 and 1805. There is a collection of 36 views of Mount Fuji by him.
I found out that he had been influenced by an artist called Shiba Kokan, who in turn had been influenced by Western Art. The Portuguese first started trading with the Japanese as early as 1543 and later the Dutch came along and started to trade with them in 1609.
Hokusai’s first waves were not as stylised as the Great Wave, but over the intervening 30 years he honed his style. His wave painting has a low horizon which gives it a more western and also menacing feel. The wave towers over three fishing boats, threatening to swamp them, Fingers of water claw the air in a very fractal pattern, and a tiny Mount Fuji sits in the background, apparently encircled by a threatening sea and lowering clouds.
Did you know the wave emoji is based on Hokusai’s work, and this in turn is linked to the waving hand emoji. There is a site called emojipedia that gives lots of interesting facts about emoji icons.
I wont go into great detail about the assignment, but I had to link in semiotics and other ways of critically appraising art works. I was up till 4am trying to pull it all together!
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Mallaband-Brown