Inspiration and practical advice for aspiring realist artists
I was at the end of the painting. I thought it was finished. But something was bothering me.
When I looked at it agin the next day, I realised it was the shadows in the background. they just weren’t reading right, they didn’t have the depth and luminosity of the shadows I could see in the subject.
And actually, I’d struggled with them throughout the painting.
It’s a surprising approach to colour. It seems almost scientific at first.
And I think that when people first come across it, it throws them a little. Because we’re so used to thinking about colour in very vague and mostly emotional terms.
So when someone starts to wonder what colour things really are, and wants to try to translate those colours into paint, this vagueness obscures something that is, in fact, rather straight forward – if only we can find our way through the fog.
Sometimes it’s hard to let go of paintings.
And when that happens with me, I’m not always sure why.
I did this little painting last month, when this season’s pears had first started appearing. Usually, I put a painting up for auction here as soon as its done, but this one…this one I hung on to.
I was about to hit the publish button, but I just couldn’t do it.
Making something new public is always at least a little nerve-wracking for me. But it’s very rare that I actually stop myself doing it.
I have a rule of thumb that I should hit publish whether I’m happy or not, because I never really am.
I’ve painted this little jug so many times now I think it’s a part of me.
So you’d think I’d get faster at painting it, but I think this was the longest I’ve ever spent on it. In fact, this little painting, despite its diminutive size, took me a little over a week to complete.
Partly I think that was because the values took some work to get right. from the highlight on the jug to the darkest shadows, the value range in the subject was well outside the range of values we can reach with paint.
These apples came from our local farmers market. Every Friday and Saturday in Stroud, there is a market that has rightly become known as one of the biggest, busiest and best in the UK. It’s certainly busy!
Last week I happened on a stall that sold only apples and apple juice. They were a little surprised that I was rooting through their boxes of apples picking ones that looked less-than-perfect. I had to explain that I was looking for ones that I wanted to paint.
Stouts Hill Apples – oil on panel, 5 x 7 inches The apples are everywhere at the moment. We found these on a walk through the grounds of Stout’s Hill, and old Cotswolds country house that we live next to. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many apples in one place, and they’re falling
Lavender and Hay Bales, Sault, Provence – oil on panel, 7 x 5 inches Click here to bid. This was one of my last paintings from Julian’s workshop in Provence last month. As usual, despite spending ages deciding which view to paint, I made a few mistakes during set up. The main mistake I made
I thought I’d picked a good spot.
There was slight shade on me, keeping the full Provence sun from baking my head, and I had good light on my panel.
The other workshop attendees were mostly in front of me, in my field of view and obscuring some of the scene. But I thought I’d be able to edit them out as I painted and make up the bits I couldn’t see.
So here is my first ever plein air painting!
Well, I suppose that’s a bit of an exaggeration.
When I was on my foundation year at art college (post-school, pre-university) I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the North Yorkshire Moors, where I lived, doing little studies that then became very large paintings of rocks.
So it’s not quite the first. But it’s the first time I tried to to make a finished piece completely en plein air, and the first time I’ve painted outside for, erm, 30 years. I think.
