Waves passing…

I had hoped to finish my latest painting, today, but I’m finding it hard to settle. I heard yesterday, by the sea at St Andrews, that a beautiful, kind and compassionate friend of mine had passed away the day before.

We had met on an end of year retreat at the Kagyu Samye Ling centre in Eskdalemuir, a few years ago, and kept in touch since with occasional emails and messages to share moments of natural beauty, short chats, humour. A short acquaintance but a feeling of a deeper connection that has brought waves of emotion passing through me, a real feeling of loss.

So this sketch is the best I feel I can do, today, part of a spacious view not far from home, looking towards the upper parts of Falkirk in the distance.

Sketchbook – looking across fields to Falkirk

Yesterday, I thought of her as I dropped into a flow of moments of clarity and calm, riding the glassy, rising face of a lovely wave at St Andrews. Today, I dedicated to her the experiences of autumnal beauty and birdsong in a walk through nearby woods; moments she would have appreciated sharing.

Making a sketch or two helps, while waves of grief pass through. I find it calming, to draw when emotions are turbulent, a physical and mental focus, it’s helped me regain equanimity before, in other situations.

I remembered an early conversation with my friend, over drawing and painting, which she aspired to do but felt very shy of doing and never shared results of, despite my attempts to encourage her creativity and to create a safe place to share it. The whole issue of people’s feelings of shame, incompetence and suppression of their own (and others’) creativity is a topic I feel deeply and strongly about, something I’ll return to in a future post.

Perhaps, after all, I will mix some colours, put some paint on canvas, step back a lot and see how it works out. I have a few hours of daylight left. Whatever is happening for you, I wish you well.

New Work: Near Letham – harvest shadows

I wasn’t expecting to complete this painting today but I just found a sort of flow with it and feel happy with the result. It’s a strange process, deciding when a painting is really “finished” and normally I’ll let it sit a day or two for the continuing processing in my mind to settle, before actually signing the work. Today I felt able to “sign it off” straight away, allowing myself some leeway if I feel, on reflection, a minor adjustment is needed.

Near Letham – harvest shadows – oil on canvas board 18″ x 22″/46 x 56cm

This time, I used a small sketching board, primed with tinted gesso, in parallel with the main canvas, on which to try out ideas and test colours. It’s not primarily intended to become a secondary version of the painting but I want to keep that possibility and use spare paint to do so if it seems to be going somewhere. I’ve sometimes found in the past that I’d inadvertently produced something interesting on a spare sheet of paper I was using to test colours or to use up leftover paint, especially with quicker-drying acrylics; so why not use a board and make it a mini-painting in its own right, if that’s the way it’s developing?

What do you think? I’d be interested in your thoughts in the Comments..

Near Letham – harvest shadows sketch – oil on board – 5″ x 6.5″ / 13x17cm

The main reference was a sketch I did on site in my little sketchbook, using a drawing pen and Inktense pencils, applying a wash to it later. It was one of those breezy, warm days in August, the crops (oats, I think) ripening and creating a beautiful range of golden-yellows, each type of grain with its own texture and subtleties of movement in the wind and well-defined shadows moving swiftly over the land. It’s a sight I suspect many who are unfamiliar with Scotland might be surprised at, if their idea of the country is of either post-industrial urban harshness or the grandeur of the “wild” Highlands, with the odd “hairy coo” for good measure!

Sketchbook original – drawing pen, Inktense pencils, water wash

I was out for a short bike circuit in the area, sketchbook in rucksack – I ride a touring bike and am pretty sedate, one of the joys of cycling is the ease of stopping and a reasonably stable “easel” of sorts to lean/sit on. There are large arable fields all around here, between Falkirk and Stirling, close to the River Forth. The Ochil hills provide a modest mountain backdrop and a reminder of their larger siblings to the West and North, mountains I want to revisit soon, after a long gap engaged in other priorities – family stuff, video editing, sea-kayaking and the like.

The next painting ideas are surfacing, to be noted and pondered in my workbook, and I have videos to turn to tomorrow (Monday off from work – hurrah!) – a project nearing completion for my YouTube channel. I’ll get the canvas ready on the easel, to challenge me to action by its blank tempting presence.

More to report soon, I hope. If you have any questions about either the painting or the process, please put them in the Comments, below… I do read and respond to them!

Thank you and best wishes.

If you like this, it’s now possible to:

Catching a falling leaf..

I’m busy with a couple of competing things, today, or that’s what my distracted mind is saying just now (“then just STOP! Re-focus!” says my inner mentor). A friend posted a series of photographs, earlier, that sparked an inspiration to paint, based upon two or three of them. Her son, strolling on the beach, distant squalls making a looming sky, curtains of heavy rain and sharp lines of bright light from waves and lens flare.

I’ve grabbed some acrylic paint and brushes and the remaining blank pages of a sketchbook and made a fast study of the fluttering and shifting images in my memory, like catching a falling leaf under waving wind-blown trees, crushing the pristine form of the airborne leaf in my efforts to grasp it.

I must clean the palette of rapidly dried paint, brushes too, attend to whatever else seems so important, then return to this later.. perhaps in oils. For now, I have something; the effort to mix and apply paint has helped give a muscle-memory to the vision. What will result? It’s uncertain but I have a starting point, a seed to plant.

………..

Postscript:

Twenty years ago today, I was also painting: walls and ceilings of a friend’s house in which I was to live for several years, a happy home. I was called through to the living room to see the breaking news from New York, in time to witness the live broadcast of the second plane strike the second tower. It was shocking .. and clear then that it was not an accident. I had a feeling, then, of some seismic processes stirring.

I send out wishes for healing and rest from pain for all those who suffered then and since.

Best wishes to you all.

Spring cycle

For the last few months my creative energy has been directed into video editing as I begin to set up a YouTube channel and produce material for an online course for beginners in navigation and map-reading. I have ideas for another, arts-focused, channel but that is for later.

This has, inevitably, reduced the time and energy left for sketching and painting but, for now, that’s ok.

Still, it was good, yesterday morning, to ride out into the fresh, bright air and make a small sketch of the ruined Kennetpans distillery, near Kincardine on the River Forth. Pigment ink pen (Uni pin) and Inktense pencils, plus a water brush – now among my favourite field sketching tools and media.

I will be glad of the Easter break, when I do plan to squeeze fresh oil paint onto the palette and rediscover the joyful, and committing, feeling of spreading the first marks on a new board or canvas. Perhaps I’ll leave a camera running…

Among other things, I’m capturing some Outdoor Moments. Here’s a sample: https://youtu.be/V1VGhYHCN5c

Meanwhile, I wish you a good week in these uncertain, tentatively hopeful, times.

Strange Lights, Two Suns.

The mountains were calling, today, with a good layer of recent snow for well over a week now and a reasonable weather forecast. I packed my gear and made an early start, before dawn, driving up to Loch Tay and the Scottish National Trust car park between Ben Lawers and Tarmachan ridge.

The first part of the ascent was in bright morning sunshine, only one other person already ahead of me. As I neared the upper slopes of Beinn Ghlas, the forecast cloud began to come in, subtly at first, a light haze that scattered the sunlight in strange ways and produced a second sun at one point, the reflection from Loch Tay brighter than the “real” one.

Then I was into a near whiteout for the next few hours, a cold northerly wind making it a “proper” winter day and giving me practice at navigating in challenging optical conditions, the uniform light making it almost impossible to judge scale and distance until very close to an object; edges and references vanish and you have to take care not to walk over a concealed drop.

It was too cold for pushing the sketching envelope today but I did manage a quick sketch to back-up the photos I took – I wanted to draw as well as shoot, the action of sketching helps to capture and focus my mind upon what I am seeing/perceiving/feeling… what is the experience I am having? I now have some material and ideas for a future painting or at least study. Whan I will do that i am not sure; I am engaged in making with wood in 3-D at present. I have, however, had a genuinely “quality mountain day”, a set of memorable walking and visual experiences that are adding to the stock of mental material.

I’ll add a photo of the sketch later.

It’s time for an early night.

Auld Dreichie. .

Auld Reekie’s mair Auld Dreichie the day …

It’s traditional barbecue weather this weekend in Edinburgh, where I’ve stopped over to help celebrate a friend’s birthday. Being outdoorsy folk, a couple of awnings and waterproof jackets dealt with the precipitation and we had a good time.

Now I’m enjoying a few leisurely hours in the city centre, watching people and situations and practising peripheral vision sketching.

Overhearing fragments of untold stories. .. if I were better at recalling phrases. .

My coffee cup is drained, only crumbs remain of the cake, time to find a train back to go home, where the beginning of a new painting awaits me.

Outside, the sun has broken through the clouds. . Happy Sunday!

Squares 3 to 6

It’s been a productive time, in the last few weeks, working on these small canvases with simple subjects from old sketchbooks that hold more than just artistic memories for me; nearly every sketch has its accompanying associations and story that returns to me as I browse through them. This can slow me down when cascades of remembered emotions and situations return to the surface of my mind as I turn the pages. I am temporarily back there, people, places, animals, atmospheres, reveries, ideas, inspirations, hopes and longings… they pass, of course, assume new forms in the perspective of time and subsequent layers of experiences. For a moment, though, they are vivid flashes in my flow and web of thoughts.

Square 3.

They are in no particular order, just the ones I felt most inclined to paint at the time. I am working more slowly and with a shade more deliberation than previously, trying to become aware of how the painting seems to want to develop and to recognise the point at which I should stop, before I lose the point of the painting or overwork it, something I am prone to doing.

Square 4.

Some days I find I have the time and inclination to work for longer on a painting, wet-in-wet with oil is tricky but I quite like doing this too. Today’s painting (Square 6) is one of these. The only drawback of these days is that I may well find, in subsequent days, that there are details I’ve missed that I want to correct, though this is much easier in this medium.

Square 5.

The canvas texture and relative coarseness of my brushes limit the detail I can achieve, a limitation that is good for me I think. I like the original sketches, drawn quickly under constrained conditions, they have some life about them that is easily suffocated by a tightness and hesitancy or reticence I struggle with in transferring them to a “finished” painting. This is one reason I chose these small canvases, even though I like to work at a larger scale. They allow me to paint with a relative looseness – something I am trying to grow – in a very small area whose limits actually enable me to find the confidence to take a less self-constrained approach.

Square 6.

I intend to paint more of these, as time goes on. For now, these six will be enough, there is a seventh in progress, to allow me to start on a landscape – Scottish mountains and other places. I spent this afternoon looking through reference photos, something necessary as the mountain walks and climbs are rarely conducive to carrying and spending time in painting. I try to use the photos as triggers for my memory of the experience of being there, keys to mental doors that may reveal something I can feel and attempt to allow to express through the movement of paint and contrasts of tone and colour. I have much more to do and practice is the only way.

I hope you enjoy these, visit the Oil Paintings gallery page for larger views. I welcome constructive feedback so please feel free to comment.

Square Two.

Resisting the urge to go for a walk onto the gloriously snowy Ochil Hills today, the second small painting has emerged from sketchbook onto canvas.

Ben Cleuch, highest of the Ochil Hills, from my upstairs window.

I am remembering a walk on the beach at Scheveningen, Den Haag, after a refreshing swim by the pier. Finding a café table, sheltered by glass panels from the wind, sketching people on the sand. This girl caught my eye, absorbed in her sand sculpture despite a strengthening wind, embodying the essence of one of the great joys of childhood.

Square Two:

On the beach – square two. Oil on canvas board 10 x 10cm

Square One

I bought a few very small canvas boards, while my car was in a garage in Glasgow. I plan to work on a selection of sketchbook material on them. Sketches of people, singly or in groups, transient situations and relationships in composition and implied or inferred between the subjects.

Today is a good day for painting, it’s damp and chilly outside, sleet has given way to snow and now slow rain. I’m enjoying getting used to the feel of the oils too.

Square One…

Square One – West Park.
Oil on canvas board 10 x 10cm

Misty Sunday

It’s been a cold, damp, misty day, good for staying indoors and painting. .. so I did.

A fresh air walk to the river this morning gave me some warm-up inspiration, a couple of quick sketches, then back to start on the next version of a painting from a dramatic day on Ben Vorlich, near Loch Lomond.

I’m trying oils, new for me, and beginning to like the feel and extended workability of the paint. A small detail, here:

Tomorrow’s forecast may tempt me out onto the hills, as I have a day’s leave, but it’s a good feeling to have a clear focus for some artwork.

More soon. Have a good week.