A springtime meadow. For sale

Yep, It’s becoming noticeable, and I even heard a blackbird properly singing the other day.

I’m pleased to see some rain, and it’s good to have a mild patch too.   January has disappeared very quickly, and at this rate it’ll be time for me to head outdoors painting again, if we have a reasonable spring.
I’ve hardly tackled some of the winter studio challenges I’d planned to, and my blog is slipping to less frequent.  I’ve not managed to paint nearly enough lately, but here are two new efforts, both on a familiar theme.  First a springtime scene.  I was thinking about colour, and those greens.  I’ve tried to avoid lime green, and instead have used some fairly primary yellow alongside blues, purples, cool dark greens (for cloud-shaded areas) and warmer colours.
Paynes grey mixed with Raw Sienna gives a green I like, and many painters combine these, but instead I get a match for this using Winsor Blue, Indian Red and Raw Sienna.  I have had Paynes grey on my palette for a while, but once again find I’ve stopped using it entirely.
If you want to avoid the lime greenness of spring look for the other variety in this transition time: warm colours of leaf buds, the white of blossoms/ground flowers (which when shaded can take on other colours), dark conifer greens, shadow & light variation, aerial perspective cools, and observe that trees have more gaps in them at this stage with branches still visible, or dead trees with no leaves or buds at all.  Some will have warmer plum or brown colours from last year’s catkins providing their main colour, with new leaves yet to shoot. And not least, just use your artistic licence to add more colours, including some dull ones – regardless of what you may see.  Just a small amount of this can make a big difference whilst being unnoticed in an individual sense.  A bit of dullness will offset even slightly bright colours well, meaning you can avoid going overboard.

A winter evening by the Avon. For sale.

The second painting here is another winter scene.  I love these statuesque trees. Not sure about this painting though; it has almost a sci-fi look to me, which is not really what I was going for.

Frame bargain:

Thought I’d show you this.  I’ve got to get some glass for it (actually I’ll use some plastic I have that I can cut to size) but I picked this up from a charity shop extremely cheaply.  It is a little bit OTT for my taste, but thought it would be worth seeing at home with a picture in it.  I do like old fashioned frame moulds at the moment, and also gold ones, but generally a bit less ‘grand’ than this one.  (Don’t worry, that’s not shoddy mounting; the frame is just leaning against the picture in this.)

Thought for the day – The experience/dogma problem

One problem I find is that there is always an exception to any piece of advice or useful ‘rule of thumb’ that can be given.
You hear some funny things coming from teachers of watercolour. Partly it’s difficult to put some things into words, and then those words can still be misinterpreted.  There have been occasions when painter friends of mine have, for example, described the character of a paper, or pigment in a way that disagrees with my own experience, even though we’ve both been using them for years.  It’s strange we can experience things so differently – or I think probably more likely – describe them so differently in words.

I saw a video clip of a well-known and successful tutor in which he stated among other things “when painting plein air the light will change within 7 minutes”, and also “at some point the scene will turn ugly.  It started off beautiful but it WILL turn ugly”.  

7 minutes?  This tutor was American, and obviously we face different weather depending where we are in the world, but I wish the timing was that reliable in the UK.  Anyway, to avoid saying silly things when trying to guide others can be difficult and I don’t enjoy hearing myself back on the occasions that I have.

The more you learn the more you realise that there are no rules, and the best guiding principles can at times be a bad guide.  I think we have to remember that our own experience is only that.  I’ve recently started writing a book on watercolour painting, but I’m not convinced  I’ll ever finish it.  No sentence ever seems completely right!

Question for the day – removing paint stains from palette

I’d be grateful if anyone would kindly comment if they know how to successfully remove Winsor (or Phthalo/Monestial/Monestral/Prussian) Blue stains from a plastic palette.  This must be about the most staining colour there is I think.  I’ve tried rubbing vinegar, alcohol and mildew remover (containing ‘active bleach’) to no absolute avail, though they each seemed to help a bit.  

Workshop in April.

This is now full, but please drop me a line if you would be interested in joining me for one towards the tail end of 2017.  Again this would be an indoor full day workshop, based possibly at the same location of Timsbury, or somewhere else near my home city of Bristol.

Website move

I have moved my website to a new host, which has made it faster to load.  There may be some other minor improvements on the way, including sorting out a snag or two.
Unfortunately I may have lost one or two new subscribers during the transition.  If you think you should have received my blog by email by now, you may need to re-enter your details on the right here and again look out for the confirmation email (possibly in your Spam folder) to complete registration.  Thank you and sorry for the bother.

Short video

I’ve added a new short video to youtube; just a compilation of my Plein Air paintings mainly, interspersed with some footage of them being painted in a few cases.  Set to a lovely song by some friends of mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8NwIb0UVRM