Siden Hill Woods on my left, a view over fields in late afternoon sunshine in April.
Drawn on A5 dark blue Ingres textured paper in conte crayon
Whitby Abbey drawn while the children hunted for quiz clues.
A complex surface dappled with sunshine and shadow.
An attempt to simplify and abstract in a few tones on Strathmore tan paper.
I am continuing to explore the translation of field sketches into prints from cut lino. The idea – not yet realised – is not to copy the picture into a print form, but to abstract from the sketch into a set of patterns.
Posted before, this sketch was made in water-soluble pencil while standing in sleet near Malham Cove in Yorkshire.
I miss that place. In this weather, the sink-holes must be the sites of torrential falls. I need to arrange a few days walking.
This last image was from a previous linocut of Malham Cove. I had used the inky roller to burnish the back of the paper and then, on a whim, printed over the top.
Ten months ago I stood in the sleet and mist on the rocky path that leads up the side of a steep drop that had been carved by falling water powered by the melting Ice Age glaciers.
I have adapted this sketch, experimenting with carving a relief into a soft cut rubber block. The aim was really to understand how the tools worked this material. It was like butter against the broad bladed gouge yet buckled and resisted the greater pressure applied from the narrow V shaped cutter. It took a while to learn how to cut fine lines. This was the first cut.
Those small white vertical lines seemed to say nothing about the rock structure beneath, so I made four prints with various depths of blue and then recut the block.
Actually, I quite like this simple image without the blue underprint. To me, it has a pleasing abstract nature.
Printing was done on the floor with an eighteen stone weight applied to the paper and block: i.e. placing a dictionary on the paper, with me standing on the book, lifting my daughter and with my son balancing on my feet and holding onto hers.
I’ve more or less said all I wanted to say on this already.
This is the beck that winds its way down to feed the fall into Hull Pot.
I created this version at home, working into the original with knife and hard eraser.
The wall with the hole from which poured the water was there but was more behind my left shoulder. Putting it into view is, what is termed, license …
As for the original, I propped myself against that wall, my feet in snow, and painted in a gap between drizzle and sleet.
In the Yorkshire Dales recently, it came as a revelation after years of painting in the field: sketches in open air are not finished pieces. Instead, they need to contain sufficient information to complete the painting.
Sure, for some artists, the field is the studio. But this skill comes from both talent and practice. For me, standing on the edge of Hunt Pot, with the sound of tumbling water in my ears, the evening light dimming to dusk and the first specks of drizzle settling on the paper, I was liberated by the realisation that my watercolour sketch was a beginning, not an end.
The information I gathered in the field was the colour and overall composition. I could not achieve the tonal contrasts or precision of drawing that I wanted at that moment. These came later, from scraping back to white with a knife and hard eraser, and building layers of deeper colour with brush and conte crayon.
The palette is aurolean, ultramarine, phthalo blue, rose madder genuine, burnt umber and burnt sienna. Some of the deeper tones are paynes grey.
When I paint, I want to fight the paper. Bite it, scratch it, hack into the layers. I want to build the image and gouge holes in it. Cover the image with another and another.
Somehow, I don’t think watercolour is really my medium.
I enjoy the watercolours of other bloggers. Looking at their skilled work, I think you have to have to be kind to your medium, offer the paper understanding, respect the areas that should remain untouched, build the experience layer by glorious layer.
I took up watercolour so I could carry a field kit and paint outdoors not because I had any instinct for the medium.
In this series, I have drawn into each pocket sized rectangle with soluble graphite and crayons moistened with drizzle and drifting snow.
I have subsequently worked into each image first in watercolour and then with knife, water and a hard rubber, tearing the surface to create texture and claw back the whiteness beneath.
In one or two places the cratered paper was holed.
The Yorkshire Dales are pocked by deep scars: chasms eroded out from beneath the limestone by running water. There is an excitement in this landscape in which springs erupt unexpectedly out of rock, run a distance and descend again into dark sinks. Everywhere, my walking was accompanied by sounds of accumulating snow-melt: gurgling, rushing and roaring. I purposely planned my route to paint at two deep pot holes.
The day was accompanied by drizzle veering into snow. I set up to draw in these conditions using a large sheet of heavy textured watercolour paper folded into sixteen panels that would slide into a plastic protection. I decided to experiment with soluble graphite and inktense watercolour pencils. This way, I could snatch brief interludes in the weather, use the drizzle itself or ground water, and work with limited materials I could hold in my pockets.
This proved tricky. I could indeed work into the snow-dampened paper and the falling flakes or drops added to the texture. However, I had to work for just a minute or two or the whole thing would wash off. Drying in my pocket, the adjacent surface lifted some of the pigments though also added to the textures. This then was the first sketch.
Only later, with the paper thoroughly dried, did I work again into this with conti crayon, watercolour and knife to create the image I wanted.
I am editing this post in response to a comment below to add links to my use of this folded paper approach, in case you are interested.
I follow many blogs. A favourite is posted by a bloke called Jason who translates Spanish poetry and paints. One thing I have copied is his use of the long vertical format for his images. He achieves intense colours and a rich light that I find I cannot emulate.
Last week in the Yorkshire Dales, I found a simple subject: the snow had built in the lee of the dry stone walls on the distant fell across the valley. Mist cloaked the heights. In the foreground, islands of richly coloured coarse grass stood out against the snow.
After painting this, it dawned on me that the curling lines made by the walls were following the landscape. This karst slope comprises shelfs and drops made as hidden water eroded the rock from beneath. I tried a quick sketch.
Jason paints “directly from nature with my arse in the mud and my hands getting cold“. This too is how I like to paint. Except I worked standing, drawing into paper dampened with snow, with water soluble graphite and an inktense black crayon.
Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be,
Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
The inspiration for this painting is from the Waterboys album An Appointment with Mr Yeats.
Continuing the saga of this seascape, based on the cliffs at Bempton on the Yorkshire coast.
I came into the studio last Saturday for life drawing and photographed this dried version.
Then on the iPad, I drew into this as an experiment before the final layering tomorrow.
This gives me ideas about how to take this forward – the green is too green for a start.
I think I will make minimal changes to the existing layers. Perhaps I’ll use a morning newspaper and paste on the shreds of George Osborne’s budget (the Guardian’s headline “income tax cuts benefit the 300000 richest households”) to make the birds.
