Mottisfont

 

Mottisfont is a National Trust estate near Romsey in Hampshire. My reference photos are from early March, when there were no leaves yet on the trees. 

Having painted them now (in April), I thought it would be nice to show the trees in blossom. This way, they make a nice contrast to the buildings in the background and generally stand out more from the other elements of the painting.

I have also moved the trees in the foreground closer together than they are in real life so they make a repeating pattern. In short, this painting is not a literal description of the place but how I feel about it.

Wimpole Hall

 Wimpole Hall on an overcast day. It was a challenge to show form in light conditions with few shadows but I am quite pleased with the result.

While I haven't been able to travel far these last two years, I have enjoyed visiting places like Wimpole Hall at different times of the year and observe the changes the seasons bring. 

Autumn Trees

 

Especially at this time of year, it is good to get out and enjoy the sun when it makes an appearance, these two paintings remind me of a walk on  just such a sunny late autumn day.

Wrest Park

This is a side view of the Archer Pavilion at Wrest Park (an English Heritage property). Because of its name I wrongly assumed it had something to do with archery, but it is in fact the name of Thomas Archer, the architect that built it.

Out of sight to the right is a long lake that leads up to this pavilion and reflects its image in the water. The whole layout is very reminiscent of Versailles. 

The architecture is quite complex and needed some simplification in order not to get bogged down too much in the detail. The overall effect I wanted to achieve was to show the contrast of the shadowed and light side of the building.

I added some finials on the left roof line that are not actually there in real life, but I thought it improved the design of the building.

Coot on ice

 

This is from a trip back in February during a cold snap. The local pond had frozen over in parts and there were several coots sitting on the ice, not looking particularly bothered by the cold or the ice. 

The challenge was to paint the reflections and giving an impression of the ice without too much extra information. Wet-in-wet and wet-on-dry painting achieved the different textures.

Big Sky

 In between 'proper' paintings, have started to paint on the back of failed efforts to try out techniques or ideas. 

This is a recreation of a dramatic cloudy sky I observed on one of my walks. I knew I wanted to paint it as simply as possible and used just three colours, the darkest being Teal by Ken Bromley instead of my usual French Ultramarine. It seems to me that it makes more transparent greys than the latter colour.

For the tree reflections, I just bled the trees into the bottom part of the paper and the reflections appeared as if by magic.

This painting took all of five minutes, but I am very pleased with the result.

Winter scene

 

Painting a winter scene in watercolour does not take too long, as the white paper does most of the work. 

I painted this from photos of a few years back. This house has since been torn down and rebuilt in a different style.

The pink house makes a nice warm contrast to the cool winter colours. 

I painted the snow on the fir trees in two different ways: 

- by using white oil pastels on the two small trees and 

- by leaving gaps of white paper on the big tree on the left.

To achieve the wintery branches of the trees in the background, I split the hairs of a Chinese brush before dipping them in paint and applying gentle upwards brush strokes.

A new year has begun; let's hope that this is the year we can finally get back to a more normal life.

This is the same park but with a view of the church.

Walking the Dog

 This started out as a failed portrait when I just couldn't get the proportions right. After lots of rubbing out, I decided to ring the changes and paint a landscape instead, where you have a bit more leeway with regards to accuracy. I am quite pleased with the result.

Spring blossom

The Lea Valley Art Society helps to keep us going by giving us weekly challenges to do during this period of social distancing. This week's theme is spring, for which I have used a photo I took last summer in Sheringham Park.

I had wanted to paint these cows for some time, as I like the strong sunlight on them. To show this, I went for maximum contrast, leaving the sunlit part of the cow's bodies as white paper. 

To fit the spring theme, I turned the tree pink to show blossom instead of foliage.

Early spring walks

We have now had almost a week of lockdown in the most beautiful weather. This is a view of one of our local reservoir lakes where I have been walking every day, while we are still allowed outside. Almost all the bays are occupied by fishermen who make the most of their enforced leisure time.

It seems to me that the air smells fresher now than before the lockdown. It calls to mind holidays in the mountains. As there are hardly any planes going overhead, the air quality must be better now than in normal times.

The three birds in the sky are a late addition to the painting: I noticed a splash of paint there and turned it into a bird and then gave it two more companions.

Making art in the time of Corona

This is my second week at home because of the Corona virus  lockdown. I am lucky that painting is a hobby that is still possible to do in isolation, and with access to photos of past holidays, I am finding plenty of inspiration and they remind me of happier times.

I hope you all find something to keep you busy and free from worrying if you are in a similar situation. The introverts amongst us are probably finding this enforced isolation easier to cope with.

I am glad that I have open spaces near me that I can reach on foot while we are still allowed outside for physical exercise. Walks in nature are calming and keep me in touch with the seasonal changes around me.

North Yorkshire Moor

I was walking the moors in August on a day that started clear but with the mist rolling in fast, which made the landscape look quite autumnal. 

At first, we spotted just the occasional grouse, but the further we walked, the more birds scuttled out of bushes and ran away from us. They are quite well camouflaged. I wonder if you can spot the one in this painting?

Inspired by Sorolla

Before visiting the National Gallery Exhibition of paintings by the Spanish impressionist painter Sorolla, I knew nothing about this artist. I gather he is particularly popular in the United States and his home country. I loved his light-filled oil paintings of beach scenes and gardens and his painting style reminded me of John Singer Sargent, his contemporary.

The lesson I took away from his garden paintings is not to worry too much about a finished look to a painting, as his quite often had areas that were not fully developed. In the same way, my own painting of a fountain in Bridge End Gardens (Saffron Walden) has a background that is just floated in wet-in-wet and left fairly vague, so as not to compete with the foreground.

Montacute House

Montacute House is an Elizabethan Manor in Somerset; you can learn more about it here. It has an impressive long gallery, which affords lovely views over the grounds. I understand that there are changing exhibitions of paintings in the rooms leading off the gallery.

The weather during my visit was overcast, which meant that I wanted to push the colours more in this painting.

Water always provides an opportunity to paint loosely and wet-in-wet to give an effect of movement. In fact, I think watercolour is one of the best mediums to portray water.

Roseberry Topping

This mountain is also called the Matterhorn of North Yorkshire but to me, it looks more like the Sphynx. It only acquired this shape after part of the mountain collapsed in the early 20th century. I visited on a clear day in February, when a super moon showed itself in daylight to add to the beauty of this scene (in my painting, I moved it a bit closer to the mountain to make a better composition).

Led by my much more energetic son, I climbed up the short, strenuous route and had to stop several times to catch my breath. It was well worth the climb, though, as the view across the North Yorkshire landscape was fantastic. On the way back down, we took a more leisurely path and encountered this strange building:

The plaque on one of the wall explained that it was a shooting lodge used by hunting parties for shelter in bad weather. By the time we reached it, the sun was already setting.

Roseberry Topping is a popular destination for walkers and I'm sure I will want to go back and enjoy it at a different time of year.

Light and Shade

This is based on a photo I took in Bridge End Gardens, Saffron Walden, and is linked to my previous post 'Watercolours from Saffron Walden'. The painting below is of St. Mary's church, Saffron Walden, also seen from Bridge End Gardens.  Every so often, I like to go through my references to get inspiration for a painting. 


I have been using Chinese brushes for most of these paintings. They make beautiful random marks. Unlike sable brushes, they don't spring back to a point, so need to be used lightly to get the best out of them.

Ickworth House

What isn't clear from this painting is how large the building is in real life.

Ickworth House is a National Trust property. If you love art, you will be impressed by the collection of portraits by famous painters, such as Titian, Velazquez, Hogarth, Vigée-Lebrun and Gainsborough.

August has been exceptionally hot, so we really enjoyed the exhibition in the cool basement of the building, where we found out more about the life of the servants working at the house in the thirties.

Ermitage Arlesheim

The Ermitage in Arlesheim, Switzerland, makes for an easy ramble. Although the area looks perfectly natural, it apparently is a landscaped park in the English style created in 1785. You can find out more about it on this site (in German).

I liked the way the buildings nestled in the landscape, with the red roofs contrasting against the greens. For the mountain on the left, I painted lots of washes wet in wet and mostly wet on dry for the rest of the painting.

Staithes

Staithes watercolour

Staithes is a small harbour village in North Yorkshire and is a popular painting destination for British artists. Well-known painters like David Curtis have painted this place and you can find his paintings in the local gallery.

I made my own attempt at painting this iconic place from the reference photos I took when there in August.

What isn't so apparent from pictures of Staithes is the number of seagulls roosting and flying around the place, their cries echoing loudly from the cliffs.

Château de Valère

Schloss Sion

This is one of four castles (a fortified church, really) we find in the Valais (Switzerland). I haven't seen this one personally but painted it from a photo taken by my husband, who went through the Rhone valley on a day trip.

In this painting, the sun is behind the castle, which makes parts of the roofs brighten up to near white.