November Afternoon

November Afternoon

Watercolour

52 cm x 74 cm or 20 inches x 29 inches

Clouds scudding by, heavy with rain.  Crows scrabble for fallen corn, the earth is sticky, bright, clay.  Occasional bursts of sunlight turn the sea to milky emerald and the fields to yellow ribbons.

Eden,

Eden, Rainforest Biome

Watercolour,

Large Moleskine.

What a lovely steamy, green, humid, growing, verdant, interesting place this is.  A right tonic on a grey November day.  The Eden Project.

Sketchcrawling Today

I went on my lonely sketchcrawl, the day started with lots of rain and wind, there was a gap, a sodden wet gap with brief glimpses of blue sky but soon the rain heavy clouds were back, it began ti get dark and I headed home.  The last sketch is the one of the house in silhouette with earth from the field as the sky colouring!  It was very good to imagine everyone, all over the world busy sketching away!

Also, and more importantly, a friend of mine had a baby in the early hours of today, I shall call her "Sketch", what a great name!

Sketchcrawl

I am sketchcrawling tomorrow.  Leaving my house at three in the afternoon walking down to Dennis Head and sketching there, if you are in the area and want to join me you can, I will be suprised but pleased!

Sun and Crows

Sun and Crows
Watercolour
30cm x 20cm or 12 inches x 8 inches.

Storm maddened clouds race with each other accross a winter landscape.  Crows fly scattered in the wind with sunlight snatching at their feathers.  It is a world of buffeting shapes and fleeting moments of glory.

The Last Leaves

The Last Leaves
Watercolour
25cm x 21.5cm or 10 inches x 8.5inches

Autumn departs in a huff, slamming the door behind her.  The last leaves cling to the trees, suddenly they are gone, skittering off across the landscape.  Wild winds whip us into red cheeked hespres's as we walk, witches laughter lost to the turbulant sky.  Every tree becomes a home to hob goblins, his brushes busy,  Arthur Rackham has drawn this world and I love it.
I am out and about every day with my sketchbook and sometimes I brave the weather for a bit longer and make an attempt at a painting.  Vivien has a post on working-plein-air, she highlights some of the difficulties involved.  This is one such effort and for the watercolour freaks out there if you click on this image you should be able to see all the colours and brush-marks.
Blogger has new features, some of them are great but I mourne the loss of the spell checker and would like to apologise for any mistakes I make, spelling is not one of my skills!

A Free Gift!

This is part of a little card cut-out house that you can print out and use (or rather, any small person that you know who would enjoy it)

It is a free gift and is available on Hand and I.  It is a little thank-you and a promotional piece.  I have started a new blog which only shows illustration work as well as an Etsy Shop to sell prints and a Facebook fan page to generate more passers by.  If you havent joined it yet then please do, it all helps!  I am also working on an advent calender which will go up on Hand and I every day untill Christmas.  So if you like that kind of thing go there to see it on December 1st.

Night swimming

Night swimming.

Watercolour.

30cm x 22cm or 12inches x 8.5 inches

If you wish to "dive into " this painting please click on the picture, it is worth a closer look.

I wasn't night swimming but I was listening to the song by R.E.M. I sit in the darkness and the cold for quite some time before beginning to paint. It is a fantastic way to spend an evening, you should try it! This is a field high up above the river, you need a waterproof blanket to sit on and a head-torch is useful for setting up and choosing your palette. When everything is ready switch the light off and just sit. Absorb the night, let your eyes become accustomed to the dark, look and look and after a while begin to think about shapes and colours, tone and form...let them into your mind and wallow in them, you need to because, although you are there, it is night so when you switch your light on and begin to paint you need memory to play a part too.

Coffee in a thermos flask is a top tip too!

A Winters Night

A Winters Night

Watercolour

30cm x 22cm or 12 inches x 8.5 inches

A full moon in a cloud scudding sky, the wind is high and the last few leaves cling to the branches. To walk out on a night such as this is to let your imagination run riot, trees become gothic shapes and every shadow hides a nameless one, waiting for a hapless traveller... spooky!

Hard Rope and Silken Twine

Hard Rope and Silken Twine
Watercolour.
38 cm x 38 cm or 15 inches x 15 inches

Every now and then we go to a marvelous place called McSalvors. It is a sort of huge army and navy store crossed with a chandlers mixed up with an ironmongers with a bit of builders merchant. Put simply you can find a lot of really useful things there and a huge amount of things that you didn't know you needed until you saw them there! Anyway it is all piled up on metal shelves or stacked up on the floor and for someone like me, who has a bit of a "thing" for string and rope, it is heaven.
So here we have rope and lovely labels scrawled with an iron-mongery script. The title is of course a reference to my most favorite band ever. Wonder if anyone knows who they are...

Rain Heavy Sky

Rain Heavy Sky
Watercolour
10 inches x 30 inches or 25.5 cm x 76 cm

There are lots of colours to be found in the landscape at the moment, the wet rich earth, the changing leaves. Autumn is here and the last leaves are awaiting a gale to send them fluttering to the ground.
This is the view above Frenchmans Creek, you can just see the river on the left of the painting, where it splits and goes up to Constantine one way and Gweek the other. Ancient oak woodlands make a textured cushion on Groyne Point.
Here are a couple of details.

Low Tide, Evening.

Low Tide, Evening.

Watercolour.

59 cm x 42 cm or 23 inches x 16.5 inches.

A weak sun sinks taking the colours of the day with it, leaving the wet sand like a silvery mirror. The beach is strewn with clumps of storm washed kelp and flecks of foam blow across the shining sands.

Autumn

Autumn
Watercolour
37cm x 50cm or 14 inches x 20 inches

It feels like ages since my last painting, Summer has flown and Autumn is defiantly here. I have spent the last few weeks flat out with my "job" as an illustrator, working on some illustrations with a very tight deadline. Having hit the deadline I rewarded myself with a painting workout. I have been planning this painting for a while, a corner of a greenhouse, with everything piled up ready for winter. I love the smell in greenhouses, warm earth, tar and string and I love the patterns made by the haphazard arrangement of pots and tools. I also like to be there as the watercolour washes gradually tighten up to reveal the shapes that I am trying to capture. Lastly but by no means least, I enjoy Autumn. The mists, the smells and the feeling of readying up for winter, the melancholia of it, beautiful!

In The Dark Woods

In The Dark Woods

Watercolour

50 cm x 140 cm or 20 inches x 55 inches

I am experimenting with large watercolours. I haven't seen that many around, this is pure watercolour as well, no ink, body colour, acrylic or pastel thrown in here.

I have a desire to paint a bigger picture but I don't quite have the courage to spend allot of money on a roll of watercolour paper, I have found some 300gms weight, 1.5m x 9m !! A lot of paper. So to see if this is really what I want to do I found some lighter paper that comes in sheets of 50 cm x 70 cm, I have taped some of these together and am giving it a go. This is all by way of research and development, a great way to paint, quite liberating.

Anyway this is the result, you might find it easier to see if you click on the image and make it come up larger. This is deep in the dark woods amongst the trees as tall as cathedral roofs. The painting process is the same, bigger brushes tho and lots more paint, longer drying times and a lot of stepping back, I need a big drawing board to strap it all to, and, one day, a super expensive, huge, watercolour brush!

Palm

Palm
Watercolour
40cm x 50cm or 16 inches x 20 inches

Phew! That was complicated to paint! I was wandering through Trebah Gardens and couldn't resist the light on these leaves. There appeared to be such strict symmetry amongst such turbulence of colour and shape, I was hooked. I did feel a bit like Rolf Harris while painting it..."can you see what it is yet?"
I started with a bit of a drawing, trying to plan I suppose, I was going to make careful use of masking fluid but I found doing that was utterly confusing. So I carried on in pure watercolour, laying down many washes, gradually building up the picture, delving into the jungle. I wanted to get the essence of the shadow on the long leaves and the feeling of amazing order among the chaos, the splashes of bright light and the huge array of greens and yellows.

Here are a couple of details but if you click on any of the pictures they will be much easier to see how the paint is placed, if you are interested in that sort of thing!

Tree Fern

Tree Fern
Watercolour
42cm x 56cm or 16.5 inches x 22 inches.

Prehistoric tree ferns, a slight mist rising in the warm air, deep steamy jungle, the luscious fronds making a canopy of dappled shade.

Bamboo

Bamboo
Watercolour
42cm x 56cm or 16.5 inches x 22 inches

Far far away, down at the secret end of Cornwall is a sub-tropical garden, in the sub-tropical garden there is a bamboo maze, inside the bamboo maze there is a bamboo seat, on the bamboo seat sits a happy artist, in the happy artists hand is a scrawling pencil, underneath the scrawling pencil is a scribbly sketchbook, out of the scribbly sketchbook comes the scribbly sketch, from the scribbly sketch comes a splashy watercolour, after some time the splashy watercolour becomes a painting... and here it is. Bam! Boo!

The Night Garden

The Night Garden
Watercolour
40cm x 40cm or 16inches x 16 inches

By the light of a full moon a garden becomes the stuff of fairy tales. It is perfectly possible to imagine all manner of magical beings inhabiting a world such as this. The tall bamboos and the giant gunnera all conspire to invert your own sense of scale, the silvery light throws unexpected shadows and conjure up another time.
This was a little sneaky of me to go here after dark but a bit of stealthy paddling and a tiptoe across a pebbly beach opened up such riches that I couldn't resist... I took nothing, only memories, some sketches and I left a few wet footprints, that's all.

Detail showing the white bridge, now an inky silhoutte

Detail showing the moon as she peeps through a troubled sky.

Night Lights

Night Lights
Oil
15cm x 15cm or 6 inches x 6 inches

I was out and about, making the most of the full moon, actually I think it if fully full tomorrow. This is a little study of what I assume to be a night fisherman, maybe it wasn't, could have been someone like me, intent on a little moon gazing. Or something else entirely!

Helford Regatta.

Helford Regatta.

Watercolour

40cm x 40cm or 16inches x 16 inches

Fireworks at the end of the Regatta. Chest punching booms and gasps of delight as the night is illuminated in brief glorious bursts. Colours flash and fizz into the water in defiance of the inky black of a summer evening.