North Berwick and Bass Rock

Here are a couple of different views of North Berwick. I've been going to the Art Group there for a couple of months and getting to like the place more than ever. There's such a variety of things to look at. This water colour takes in the harbour and North Berwick Law. The boat in the fore ground is called 'The Girl Pat.' I was told by someone in the Art Group that the owner named it after his daughter. There are some sail boats outside the harbour, no doubt associated with the local yacht club.

 My daughter, Sally is well into surfing. That's her on the left with one of her Joxy club  friends and a big Bass Rock in the background.

Paintings for sale at Longniddry Library, East Lothian

'The Garden'   Yes, this is the water colour painting I use on my blog (at the top!) It can be yours if you pop along to Longniddry Library.

Easdale and Ellenbeich, Argyll. This is a watercolour painting of the old jetty at the quarry. It is the second of my two paintings for sale at Longniddry Library, East Lothian.

These two paintings are part of a display produced by the students of Sheena Phillips.

Telford College and the Swamp

Last Tuesday I went along for my  interview at Telford college. I have applied for the foundation course in Art and Design.http://triboy57.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/telford-college-foundation-course-in.html
 To start with the head of  department explained that there are three courses on offer. A first diploma, a National Diploma and the Foundation Diploma. They are all classed as Further Education, but there is no doubt that the Foundation Diploma is the most stretching of the three and it gets you onto the second year of an art degree course. You have to pass each assessable stage to go on to the next. We were being softened up to accept something less than Foundation if the staff thought that was where we were at. The interview itself lasted about twenty minutes and a lot of that time was taken up with admin details. My interviewer told me that she thought I was Foundation level and that they liked my Portfolio. Obviously, there is a lot of room for improvement... or else why bother going there? In particular, I will be getting to learn how to use sketch pads properly. That is if I get in. We will hear about that towards the end of April.

It was the last water colour class for this term with Sheena Phillips today. We were left to our own devices. I decided to do some scraping out and  paint spraying. I wanted to create a swampy effect. I think these techniques hold some promise... so I'll have a go at some more soon.

Clouds

Clouds are very important in landscape painting. Particularly so in water colour paintings. During my water colour class, last Tuesday, we were asked to experiment with clouds. This meant I could be adventurous, as I hope you notice.

Thanks to everyone who has looked at my blog... I hit the 10,000+ mark this week.

Cross country running at Berwick

One of the Borders cross country races is near Berwick on Tweed, at a place called Spitall. It is an attractive course, which soon heads out onto the beach. At the far end of the route, it heads up a hill and along the coastal path into a field. The way back is along the same route in reverse. A couple of years ago, the tide was fairly high when we left. When we got back it was right up to the edge of the dunes with big waves splashing in. At a particular spot you had to time your way around the corner of a headland or else the waves got you. Not everybody got through unscathed. In fact one of our club members was engulfed by the waves. Claire came through okay and left a memorable photo of her exploits behind her.
This is my interpretation in water colour and acrylic

Sleepy Stenton - East Lothian

Just the place for a stroll on a sunny afternoon.

Biking

An atmospheric water colour, painted a couple of months ago at my art class in Musselburgh.

Haddy by moonlight

Before Christmas I went for a walk with Harvey near Burn's Well. There was the most amazing moon and as dusk fell it dominated the whole scene. I'm intending to do a duet of paintings because I also caught a great photo of the moon over Bass Rock. In the mean time I have done an initial painting of the Haddington scene, and this is it. I'm going to do a bigger painting later!






There was a bit of magic around that night. The moon, the distant houses and the countryside. Oh yes, and the trees... the amazing trees

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Painting the 'Stone Fridge'

Over the last  month I have been working on a water colour painting of a building I came across on the Dunbar festive 10km run. The building is located at Hedderwick Hill farm stables near the John Muir Country Park.
On a cold day in early January, Harvey and I took a walk through the countryside with the purpose of taking some photos of the building. We came back with quite a collection from all angles around 'the fridge.' This is what it looks like.

There are a few things that attract me about this building. I like the fact that it is old and is made of red sandstone. I also like its very unusual shape and the fact that it has moss growing on the roof and creepers covering one side of it.
The other buildings around it and the woods across the track give it a truly rustic feel.

On the way back from my first trip, I stopped off  in a cafe and a fellow customer assured me it had been used for keeping horses to grind flour. My second visit to 'the fridge' with Harvey was also pretty cold, but on that occasion, I not only made a sketch of the building, but also knocked on the neighbouring cottage door. I was told that in the past the building was in used a fridge, at a time when the farm had cattle. The inside is lined with slates and keeps cool in the summer. This is the sketch.

Before I got started on the  painting, I did a small, quick painting to work out some of the challenges I would have on the larger painting.

So when I started I had a bit of material to work with as you can see above.
The painting is 19 x 15.5" or 48 x 39.5 cms.
The first task was to draw the outline on of 'the fridge' and surrounding buildings and countryside. At this point I painted in masking fluid onto the building stonework and chimney.

I painted in a graduated sky and then the roof of 'the fridge' and surrounding buildings. I used Paynes grey for the roof with some hooker green for the moss. The sky is cobalt blue and cadmium yellow.

I experimented with mixture of alizarin  crimson and cadmium orange for the red Dunbar stonework. The creepers were painted in a mixture of paynes grey and burnt umber. The windows were mostly in paynes grey with the left hand window also having some cercilean blue at the bottom.
 The far door has a bit of one of my favourite colours, yellow orchre.

Next I painted in the background trees, followed by the nearer trees on the right. I filled in the track and worked on the grass verges and the abundant drop of leaves. I considered putting in some people walking in the distance, but decided to leave them out.
The next stage is to make a mount and a frame for this painting. I may also get in printed.

Water colour class

First day back to Sheena Phillips water colour class today. Sheena must be doing something right because it was a full house of about 20 people. Most of the class from last term were there, but one of the men  was missing, which means there are only two of us now. One advantage of there being so many women present, is that they come laden with cakes and biscuits. The Christmas cake was particularly good. The subject today was light,colour, tone.  and  The painting plan was to use a  limited palette of Naples yellow and neutral tint (a grey colour.) I didn't have either of these colours, so I used paynes grey and yellow ochre. This is the result:

On the way back from Musselburgh, I called into the Loch Centre at Tranent for a swim with Christine. We have been doing some drills that involve swimming for six kicks on one side and then six kicks on the other side. There are some variations of this drill, all with the intention of improving the roll of the front crawl. I'm hoping that this drill and others will help me achieve my New Year's ambition of improving my swimming form.

Painting Lia's Portrait

This painting is based on a photo of Lia taken at a wedding about four years ago. It shows the smiley character of my granddaughter who looks beautiful in her party dress. I just love the sense of fun that exudes from her happy smiling face.

I planned to paint this picture over a year ago, so I have had plenty of time to think about it.

I decided to use water colour paints but opted to use smooth paper rather than water colour paper. I drew the outline of picture and used masking fluid on the high visibility white areas in the eyes, lips  and teeth.

Next, I worked  on the background. I used Prussian blue on the bottom left and allowed yellow ochre to mix with the top section in a wet on wet pattern. I used cadmium orange on the top right and a green made of Prussian blue and yellow ochre on the bottom left. I added a couple of background details from the photo and added a pale pink wash to Lia's face neck and arms.

Then I worked on the tone of the skin with additional brush stokes in the darker areas. I used a small round brush and a rigger brush for the hair. The eyes were coloured with Prussian blue and the centre with indigo blue.

I felt that the portrait could be improved by catching more of Lia's essential joy. I decided to paint the portrait again, but this time I used water colour paper and more masking fluid, to depict Lia's fine hair. I decided to make the background more dramatic and leave out the details from the photo. I allowed more wet in wet mixture  of the background colours and used salt on the left side to produce the starburst effect.

One of the  wonderful characteristics of water colour is that each time you paint the same subject you get a different picture. You have to learn to live with the fact that you are not completely in control of the pigments. This is the final picture, incorporating the changes I made.

Darren Woodhead's exhibition at Waterston House

Yesterday I took some time off Christmas shopping to visit Waterston House, the headquarters of the Scottish Ornithologists' Club. This very attractive building is perched on the edge of Aberlady Bay, in  a perfect position to see the water birds that live there and in particular, the comings and goings of the geese.
What drew me there is an exhibition of Darren Woodhead's watercolour paintings which are on display until 25 January. Darren paints all his pieces outdoors, even in the worst of Scotlands weather. He has a keen eye for wildlife and his exhibition of East Lothian's  wild birds in their natural habitat is first class. Darren wanders all over East Lothian accompanied by his dog  paints wonderful landscapes with the bird life a natural part of them. The paintings are often large with intimate depictions of the birds. They feel close by and fully alive. Two books of paintings and descriptions of the places they were painted called 'Up  river - song of the Esk' and 'From Dawn to Dusk'  are available to look at or buy.

This is an excellent exhibition of Scottish wildlife, water colour painting shown is a pleasing setting... get along and see it if you can.


One of the many paintings at the exhibition

Back in the groove

The last few weeks have seen me getting back into a few of the things I enjoy doing. I have been out running, done some cycling and splashed about in the swimming pool. I always feel alot better when I'm involved in regular exercise, with any luck, I'll keep injury free and get fit again.

I have also renewed my aquaintance with Sheena Philips. I admire her water colour paintings and it's a delight to go to her classes and learn the tricks of the trade. Here is a water colour we did in class over a couple of weeks, called 'The Garden.' On this occassion I would say that the real thing has more impact than this version taken through the scanner

John Muir Country Park

John Muir Country Park is one of my favourite parts of East Lothian's coast line. It's a great place to go for a run or a walk. My dog Harvey loves running through the woods and along the sand flats. It is a place of huge contrasts. When the tide is high the place transforms for the expanse of sand and mudflats into an exciting water world. The full moon has given some very high and low tides over the last few days and the contrast between them is remarkable. The high tides and wind bring with them a fair degree of coastal erosion. About a year and a half ago, I painted a view of the coastal edge of the park. It has Trappain Law in the background. I walked along the same bit of coast a couple of weeks ago and you can hardly recognise the area, so many trees have toppled over. I could tell it was the same place below because I found the tree trunk shown in  the painting.

The object of the walk that day was to paint another picture further along the edge of  the park. I went armed with all my gear and sat next to a burn near a wee bridge which connects to a headland. It is not visible in the painting but there is a funky bench to sit on and look at the scene. I'm planning to go back again and do another view from in front of the headland with the bench in full view. It was a freezing day when I did this painting and it also started to rain. Some of the effects on the watercolour are due to mother nature!

Last year I painted my first 'bigger piece.' It is 7450 x 5400 and in watercolour. It was taken from a  photo of David Muench in his book American Landscape. It is the Buckskin Pass, Elk Mountains, Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness, Colorado. I used some  'resist' in the form of grey crayon for some of the snow streaks on the side of the mountains. The flowers in the foreground were created by using wet in wet technique. I enjoyed exploring new techniques when I painted this piece and I am continuing to try out new approaches when I get the opportunity.