Tempest at the Globe

Plenty of posts to come on Festival of Quilts but  they require a bit of thought and I'm a bit brain dead after getting back from Shakespeare's Globe well after midnight!  It was our 8th wedding anniversary and we went  with Sue and Peter to see a superb production of 'TheTempest'. As a present we had a boat trip from Bankside to Embankment after the performance - not very far but the lights on the water were wonderful.  

Slapton Dramatic Seascapes - Paintings

 I've been at it again - somehow deleting the contents of posts so this is mark 2! My best painting was done at the end of the course on a piece of gessoed canvas that Susan gave me to experiment on. I hope to have a go another time on a much larger piece using her techniques of painting with the whole body with plenty of  vigorous brush work, dripples and spashes. Then it can be rolled up to transport.

 It was a while since I'd done any painting so I limbered up with placing masking tape stencils on a sample for the 3rd in a series using an old red and white quilt. Other students were intrigued by the marks and I ended up doing a quick demo.

 Then I started painting on canvas boards, starting with images and sketches from the Fleet at Chesil Beach. I had others in mind but after an inspiring  visit out to Prawle Point, based the rest of my work on those.

 For the first time I did a quick sketch on site in acrylics using  a small lunch box as an improvised wet palette, something I'd definately do again, so much quicker at capturing cahnging conditions than  watercolour. I liked the fresh marks  and colours I achieved unlike the painting I did based on it
which went through several repaints and has yet to be fully resolved

This last painting also needs some more work to simplify , strengthening shapes and colours - it's a bit too literal and pretty at the moment!

Slapton Dramatic Seascapes - Sketches

Sketches painted on the spot  above; thumbnails and preparatory doodles  below

Slapton Dramatic Seascapes - Photos



It wasn't until the final morning (before breakfast!)  that I  made it down to the beach at Slapton, drawn by the light of the early sun on the sea with only birds and fishermen for company   

 The view from my bench, watching Burnet Moths, eating flapjack, considering where to start on my sketching

From the National Coastwatch Station  

The birds at Pawle point were particularly noisy

 I have numerous photos over several years of the curvy field around Prawle Point but hadn't seen them from this viewpoint before

Beautiful colours and textures of lichens

My first views of Slapton when  arrived - dramatic skies 

Six-Spot Burnet Moths at Prawle Point

 

A magical experience at Prawle Point, already my favourite spot to paint on the Devon coast. I walked past the National Coastwatch Station  onto an area of sublime coastal grassland (it's an SSSI) with lots of sea thrift and  rare Autumn Squill coming into flower. What really dazzled though were the hundreds of Six-spot Burnet Moths  flying around, flashes of red and black. Some newly emerged from cocoons on grass stems  were drying out, others were mating,  the remainder searching for nectar. A spectacular sight, it was a while before I could concentrate on sketching and painting , an experience that will stay with me for a long time.  

Dusk Watercolours- Week 2 Barbican

Our final session of  Dusk Watercolours was held at the Barbican, in the seating area by the fountains, with opportunities to tackle buildings both ancient and modern. Having missed guidance for 2 sessions by  playing hookey, the tutor was determined I should experiment with techniques outside my comfort zone,  using candle wax resists and gum arabic

Not my best efforts but I enjoyed the opportunities to abstract and a new appreciation of concrete!

Lots of water to interpret - I was just about to tackle some amazing ripples and reflections when they switched some of the fountains off ( it was also quite windy) so I settled for drawing the shapes around   this round fountain . Rather overworked in the end as I struggled to balance the tones, the details look more interesting than the whole.

 

Overall I had mixed feelings about the course, nothing wrong with the tutor but having some experience already in watercolours (and being rather settled in my ways!) I didn't get as much out of it as I'd hoped. The emphasis was on colour mixing and techniques whereas I would have liked a bit more on composition as that in my opinion is what makes or breaks a work of art. I did however enjoy the challenge of urban sketching and will be looking at more courses that take me in that direction, particular the opportunities to make more abstract images. 

Dusk Watercolours - Week 2, South Bank

Back from Slapton and Festival of Quilts - time to make an inroads into the backlog of blog posts!
On the first day of 2nd week of  City Lit Dusk Watercolour course we again met at Embankment, this time to paint  in Embankment Gardens, a delightful spot I hadn't been aware of. After it started to rain , the drawing of plants and trees started to  pall for me - I can do that at work! Having glimpsed the London Eye through the foliage I really wanted to draw the unfamiliar, the urban landscape  so I played hookey again, walking across to the South bank.

The approaching rain clouds  gave ever more dramatic skies which I enjoyed trying to capture with varying degrees of success - these simpler ones worked best.

As the sun set  the  natural light show entranced me and I gave up sketching content just to watch it  unfold