Category: Plein air

Good morning 2018

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Good morning all!

There’s been a big sleep on this blog as i’ve been settling into my new location. The house is done and the sun is coming out and things are starting to get more exciting around here!

During my quiet time I’ve been thinking about what it is that causes me to keep coming back to art. I realise that alot of what drives my curiousity and creative practice is the experimenting and finding new techniques and tools to play with. I want to see how differnet people use the same tools for the same problem and create very different solutions. It’s fascinating!

I don’t chase after big exhibitions as a rule, when i’m thinking of doing my personal artwork, as they are not my end goal. It’s the discovery aspect of playing and experiencing new solutions to age old problems that I enjoy. Plus, with the new technology coming through, its making art appear more and more like magic!

I have been getting out drawing again and I have taken to using watercolours on location. You can see some of my work here.

As a focus, I am using Carlisle Cathedral as my subject to practice on. Everyday it has a different atmosphere and so many small details that i’m finding it very interesting. Listening to the bells, this daily practice has become like my own prayer, to centre myself and get back to me. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of this practice.

Derwentwater plein air – First attempts

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I've mentioned before that I recently moved to Cumbria in England. This has given my spirit an excellence burst of inspiration and energy and has allowed some of my creativity to come out. I'm still making lots of colour charts ( I'll show you my most recent one in another post shortly!) but I'm also getting outdoors while the weather permits and doing some sketching with watercolours.
I visited Derwentwater recently ( home to the Derwent sketching pencils, I did visit the museum and their shop but I didn't buy more pencils…I have to use the ones I've got already before I allow myself to buy even more!) and here are some of the sketches I managed on the day. I'm really pleased with the day's outcome and felt that I've taken a solid step forward to where I want to be as an artist with this.


This is the palette I put together for my outing

  • Lemon yellow
  • Cadmium yellow
  • Yellow ochre
  • Burnt sienna
  • Van Dyke Brown
  • French Ultramarine
  • Cerulean
  • Quinacridone magenta
  • Cadmium red
  • Sap green
  • Hookers green light
  • Payne grey
  • Ivory black

I felt that I mainly ended up using lemon yellow and yellow ochre mixed with all the combinations of the blues and greens to figure out the greens. Payne grey was my favourite for the clouds and water with cerulean for the sky. Having the readymade brown was handy to have, since I was using a very small mixing tray. I tested the colbalt turquoise but felt that cerulean and the Ultramarine were enough of a range for the palette

This is the colour range that I got from the set, I wanted a big range of greens from earthy to lush but not too many blue-greens as I know that I would mainly be trying to capture the forests and shrub land on the mountains. Very limited purples too which was fine as the heather isn't out yet. I also totally stopped round say greens name when I was labelling, oops!

On to the sketches! I warmed up with some pencil sketches before just sloshing paint about for the rest of the day.

I feel that I need more practice with my tonal values and compositions as I set up my sketches but I'm still really pleased with these ones and happy to share them with you all. If you've visited Derwentwater and did any sketches, post a like in the comments so I can see your stuff!