Nasty Day

Sitting here in a stormy cold and rainy Lake District I wondered what to paint, and thought this view of Grasmere would transport me to sunny warmer days. It's quite a difficult picture to paint with lot's of trees!! Reflections, a building and a little action with the rowing boat. Thinking about this picture I'm going to keep my horizon line at about 1/3 this will allow me to have a good space for the sky, but this could be painted without a sky!! Tackling the trees will be fun, but been aware of keeping the distant trees more blurred, blue and Grey's. I will put the building in because it's in a good position and also causes a nice reflection in the water. The rowing boat is great especially with the red jacket this breaks up all the greens and of course is a complementary colour for all those trees!! If you fancy having a go please do email me the painting I would love to see it, I'm going to tackle it over the next couple of days and will blog the result.

Classes, workshops and head first in the snow!!

Just got back from a wonderful skiing and a little painting holiday in the beautiful French Alps, luckily everything is still in one piece, been an artist my concentration level in a breathtaking place is not always 100% I often loose my footing and end up in the snow just for admiring the scenery! I've just organised my watercolour evening classes in Keswick they start Mon 19th January, and the weekend workshops are proving very popular, these will be quite intense days where we will cover alot of watercolour techniques and secrets!!! I've put another date in for Fri 27th to Sun 29th March in Keswick. This picture of Ullswater is one that I will be demonstrating step by step, it's a great painting to have a go at.

Happy New Year

Here am I sketching in one of my favourite places, Chamonix I am looking across at the 'Dru' a wonderful mountain or maybe it is called a peak!! I have spent the New year here and the weather has been fabulous very cold but brilliant blue skies I think the shade is between winsor blue and cobalt but maybe a need to look into another blue!! It's very easy to stick with the same palette year after year, a new year should bring a few new ideas, techniques and new colours.Today I tried using gouache instead of watercolour to see if this freezes!! and it didn't but we were sitting in bright sunshine, I always find it quite challenging using a different media, today the only challenging thing was that I had paint in the bottom of my bag, the gouache hadn't hardened like watercolour.The other challenging thing was skiing down a cadmium red run!!

Boxing day walk

I love a walk on Boxing day, after stuffing ourselves on Christmas day it's great to burn off all that excess food and wine! Boxing day this year in the Lakes was a beautiful day the sun was shining and there was barely any breeze, which made it glorious walking weather. Christmas cake was in the sandwich box and a flask of tea what could be a better way of spending Boxing day. We ticked off two more Wainwrights Great Bourne and Starling Dodd in Ennerdale, these are not well known fells but what fantastic views of all the ones we know, Calbells, Helvellyn and over to Gable.

Red, red robin comes.........

I can't resist taking photo's of Robin's they really are little posers, I caught this little chap at Grasmere our Lakeland Robin's are not camera shy, sometimes I feel you could hand feed them. With a week to go to Christmas it's been very busy with the gallery, Xmas card workshops and preparing for the festive time which I love, mince pies haven't been made yet,and I still have some pressie's to buy and wrap!

Winter wonderland

Fresh snow and calm lakes make the perfect winter picture, I'm thinking of having a go at this lovely view of Grasmere, I drove to Grasmere from Keswick we had no snow but Grasmere had this lovely sprinkling, where shall I go I thought, and as always I'm drawn( excuse the pun!) to some of my favourite views, I often paint the view down the Lake looking at Helm Crag but today this is what caught my eye, the bench that I usually sit on was snow covered, so I did a quick standing up sketch, always having pens and pencil to easy reach makes a difference in these conditions. A hot chocolate warm up ended the perfect afternoon

A Classic

I love painting Striding Edge it really is a true classic with lots of excitement and drama especially in the winter, it's in Lot's of ways helped me succeed in the world of art, one of the first exhibitions I entered was British painters at Ilkley where I was voted one of the top artists and an actor off Cor nation street bought my Striding Edge ( Alf Roberts the shop keeper) this gave me such a buzz and greater confidence to approach galleries. Now in December this year I have my first demonstration and article in 'Leisure Painter' and I was asked to paint my old favourite Striding Edge. If this cold front keeps up , I'll be taking just the sketch book, watercolours tend to freeze on the paper! back up Helvellyn to see a classic Lakeland vista.