A fresh start

So far this summer I've looked out of my kitchen window every day and my eyes have rested on this magnificent foxglove in the back garden. It's the softest lilac with pale green at the top of each bell, and deep purple splotches inside. In a storm last week it was so laden with raindrops that it was bent over at right angles, so I've had to stake it up to protect it. Fingers crossed it'll self seed and come again in two years time.
I love this box of watercolours, and should take it with me everywhere I go, as when I pick it up it just begs to be used. I've been very remiss these last few months with little or no art in my days. In fact I lost momentum last year around August, with a burst of activity in November, and not much since. So I've kind of had a year's sabbatical I suppose.

Not that I've come back with any strong sense of direction. Maybe that's what I was waiting for all that time. But it never came. I felt lost in my art work, with no strong subject to get my teeth into. Often I've stood in my studio, getting filled up with junk from the house which needed storing out of the way. I can't blame my lack of work on a messy studio. More like the mess was a symptom of my apathy. No, apathy is wrong, because I've yearned to paint and draw, but I've had a block. A fear of failing. I suppose it's good that I felt my art had been improving for a long time, and after a pause I was scared to back-peddle. But when I started this blog, after a very long sabattical indeed (look back to my beginnings and you'll see) I had no strong direction then. Just an itch to pick up a mark-making impliment of some kind and make a start, after a very long block.

This morning I woke up with that itch again. So here I am. I make no promises to you guys, or even to myself. I just have a hope - that I'll be here in a week's time, and that there'll be a couple of things I'd like to show you all.

Painting when wet, 1 of .........

It was snowing, and drizzling, and hail stoning on Easter Monday afternoon. I used the palette knife to scrape on the pinkish background, then, instead of blow-drying it, I painted on the branches wet in wet using quite a stiff brush. It was satisfying the way the paint was scraped away, and built up channels. Then I'd wipe the pink off my brush, and load it with a brown-grey mix, and work that in. I'm going to work over and over this one, so this will be the first photo of I don't know how many.

Plastic Pyracantha

I painted this canvas working from the pencil drawing I'd done earlier. I'd wanted to paint it from life, but I was busy with the children all day and then it got dark.

So, after tea, while the rest of the family watched Blackadder, I sat in the corner of the living room and painted, gently rebutting my four year old daughter's kind offers of assistance.

I worked in acrylics, because my husband has a bad chest and turps fumes aren't nice to him. Anyway, I only tend to paint with oils in the garage, or in the kitchen with the back door open for ventilation. And oil paint, turps and kids aren't a good mix.

The acrylics' drying rate was good and, at the same time, bad. Good, because I could use a hairdryer to dry the under-painting. Bad, because I got mixed results when I worked back over areas I'd only painted 20 minutes earlier. I need to read up to see what I can mix with them to keep them workable for longer.

When I'd finished this painting I immediately started preparatory work on a larger painting based on the nine charcoal studies I'd done. Fortuitously I had a ready-cut piece of board measuring 50cm square, perfect for 3x3 10cm blocks with a 5cm boarder. I painted the boarder in white acrylic gesso in an overlapping grid, which echoes my garden trellis. Now I'm pondering what colour to use as a background for the blocks. I may just use the neutral pink which I used on the long canvas yesterday, or I may use a range of tones. No, I want the Pyracantha branches to be the main feature, and varying the backgrounds will just be an unwanted complication. I'll keep it simple.

Oh, the title of this post comes from the fact that I used acrylic paints which are, after all, plastic.

Pyracantha!

Thank goodness I got that sorted out. The species of the tree in my garden has been bugging me for weeks now.

The wind is blowing, but leaning against the kitchen back door I have a great view of my pyracantha in the corner of my back garden. Soon it will be covered in blossom, and then the leaves will come out, though there's still a fair covering of dark green leaves high up as it's an evergreen. Even later in the year there'll be masses of small orange berries, which the blackbirds will feast on all winter long.

But for now it's bare and graphic against the wall.

My tree

It's really starting to bug me, what kind of tree this is. If I remember rightly it's technically a shrub which was planted by the previous owners, and grew tall as there's little light at ground level.

This is an oil board, about A4, which I covered with a thin layer black and red acrylic. When it was dry I squeezed out a load of white acrylic, and smeared it around with a plastic palette knife, then started scraping back to the black to describe the trunk and branches. After a while I added some green, and then some red as a contrast, and mixed all three to make a pale grey/lilac to suggest the floor and the wooden planter.

I hate it as a painting, but I loved it as an exercise. I should really do some more of these to see where they lead.

Tree Lines #9 to #12

And here are the last four.

Next, I want to paint the white shapes onto a black background. Thick white paste-like paint, leaving black grooves.

When I drove home from work yesterday I noticed a number of trees in peoples front gardens which had been pruned back hard, resulting in the most uncomfortable shapes. Especially as it's not quite spring here yet so they are still bare of leaves.

Today the wind is up again, and I walked into the kitchen this morning to find two collared doves taking shelter on my bird table. There are a lot of plants on my windowsill so I was able to get most of the way through making coffee without disturbing them. Until I reached up for the sugar, when then took fright and left.

Tree Lines #5 to #8

Here are the next four in the series. Some I smudged with my finger, some using a rolled paper tortillon, some I just drew over and over with the charcoal.

Tree Lines #1 to #4

After drawing the tree in my garden I sat at work all day distracted by the way the tree cut across the plain canvas of the painted wall behind. So, this evening, in the dark, I took a series of flash photos of the tree from different angles, and made charcoal studies from these on 6" squares of watercolour paper. Here are the first four. I don't know what they'll end up being used for but I had great fun doing them.

Batten down the hatches

There's a big storm hitting the UK today. The worst areas affected will be the south-west, and as I'm in the north-east I'm getting off lightly. But there's a driving rain, and the noise of the wind as it batters our house which overlooks the river Wear and the North Sea is frightening at times. I was first woken by it in the wee small hours. And hubby is driving in a high-sided van down to London today. I just hope it's still upright. Goodness knows how those in the south-west are faring?

Anyway, I made a start on a garden drawing yesterday, using charcoal. There's a thorny tree in the garden which has been pruned hard over the years so that all the leaves are above head height. The split trunk is contorted and makes a great set of lines against the cream-painted brick wall. I pressed and twisted the charcoal stick as I drew. I know it's a subject I'm going to draw time and time again. I have an idea for a canvas with a matt, chalky background with the tree cutting across, and maybe just a hint of the green diffused light on the wall cast by the canopy.

Getting organised to draw more

I don't have time to sit, without distraction, and draw during the daytime most days. My hubby sometimes arranges to have the kids to give me some 'art time', but, as we both work, when we have the chance we'd rather spend time with the kids together. He's working all hours at the moment, and yesterday I made him a pecan pie as a treat to keep his spirits high. The kids didn't like it much, but that just meant all the more for us.

I've been thinking about what I can and what I can't do when I'm with the kids. What I can do is take them to interesting places. I can't expect them to amuse themselves while I sit down in an interesting place for a 40 minute sketching session. But I can take photographs of views and objects, then draw them on an evening while the kids are in bed.

So, this morning, I made up three accordion sketchbooks, an idea I got from Laurelines' travels, then spent 15 minutes in the garden taking photos of the views. The accordion sketchbooks seem like a fantastic way to collect together views and images on a theme.

I love my garden. It's a peaceful space, even though it's the size of a postage stamp with walls on all sides. I have a number of bird feeders, and even in winter I'll stand at the back door watching the activity of the goldfinches and blackbirds, and the changing sky overhead against the terraced rooftops beyond. Because it's so small, I can only ever see a narrow area at a time depending on where I stand or sit. Because of this, I've arranged it so that every corner and wall is a landscape in itself, with areas of interest, as well as space to let your eye wander so that I don't feel too enclosed.

The photos I've taken will provide me with plenty of starting points for drawings and studies.