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painting the hedgerows in a jug

Posted jane -->on 22nd Jun 2017

I have a squirrel buster sunflower seed feeder! I have had a bumper spring -baby bluetits, great tits, starlings, blackbirds, robins, chaffinches and woodpeckers being fed at my feeding station. but also squirrels and wood pigeons, and the squirrels had chewed off all the plastic bits of the sunflower feeder, the only one not protected. this squirrel buster is great, the weight of the squirrel (or woodpigeon) closes the feeder.

sadly found this beautiful baby great tit, no idea what killed it. all that work the parents have put into growing this bundle of bones flesh and feathers gone in an instant.

also you can see one plant of the wonderful display I have had of foxgloves, still going. lots of purple flowers.

and this jugful of wild flowers has mallow in it, the same purple – picked up by the cottons I’m getting rid of from the stock room …

I wanted to paint the local landscape in a different way and thought of cutting the tall weeds from Cakes lane, as I was pushing my way through the towering growth the other day. in fact, I have most of them in my garden, or in the lane just outside my gate.

the canvas a little smaller than that huge mass of vegetation in the jug

the hogweed leaves are full of pattern. I’ve sprayed some of the background with gold, for a change

keeping it loose. palette knife mostly.

finding it an adrenaline high, needing some relaxation in between to recover.

left it at this yesterday, glad of a slight cool down in the weather

then this afternoon I added in a few densifications

and some sorrels from the garden

and some clarifications …

really enjoyed this, I’ll have to do some more.

 

post open studios

Posted jane -->on 18th Jun 2017

I enjoyed Open Studios – I have a tidy-ish garden, the office turned into a decent space – and I had reasonable amount of visitors and sales – well actually sales were just as good as at Hatfield Art in Clay, even the second time I did it which seemed like a roaring success – without the cost and effort.

I have left most of the pots out, they suit the garden and the garden suits them.

my vegetable plots are being undermined by a mole – I thought I had sorted moles out with my underground wine bottles – but it seems I’ll have to get the pest man in.

the difficult thing is to get myself back into the swing of making. it seems I am either loafing around, writing, gardening, messing about with the dog

or over-producing, whether painting or making pots.

so this has been made into my painting space, mostly, though there is still some knit and office stuff going on

and I am just putting off touching that canvas, but the idea is to paint the plants of cake’s lane and all the wild parts of walks in the jug, a flower painting, of sorts

though the hogweed is most unhappy and one of the docks fainted too. however the intention is to make it quite abstract. you can see the office stuff going on behind … the imac is back, and some parcelling up going on …

having not been at all inspired by the rush of green growth,

I took Bimba round the Hard Farm paths and suddenly realised that the way to approach it is close up, texture and thick paint,

a bit Joan Eardley

however the heat is making me opt for indoors and the computer, as you can see ….

but I have lots of lovely summer photos of the sorts of things I want to paint.

walking with La B has been interesting, getting calmer,

we are getting to know each other

she likes to stop and sniff a lot, which means that I have to stop too, no way can she be off the lead.

but I am getting new angles

catching more details (a speckled wood butterfly)

feeling more like translating these field textures into paint textures.

the hot weather means the house is open to the garden

she is more relaxed, has learnt to cope with the stairs (she thinks my bed the best place in the house but as she’s still very puppy and likes chewing things I certainly don’t leave her upstairs on her own, and she’s quite happy in her own bed in the kitchen at night)

she’s worn a racetrack through the long meadow grass

and likes to play football by herself with a tennis ball.

the roses are over more or less, early; they started very early, except for the rambling rector which has made the plum tree and part of the sycamore above it white as with a fall of snow.

there are humming bee hawk moths around (see, rather blurred, above, on the valerian), but no swifts nesting – occasionally some screaming parties fly over but they are from the farm, ditto swallows.

 

this morning we paused on the path next to Bullfer Grove, on the bank under the big oak trees and I recorded this – thrush, chaffinch and crow. 8.30 am June 18th summer wood birdsong

such a short season before the birds stop singing and everything starts to be a little dull and over-ripe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

open studio starts tomorrow

Posted jane -->on 26th May 2017

I’m waiting for the evening to set up my signs – I have a mallet, but the ground is a bit hard, I just tried one ..

this morning’s early walk brought one of the most magical things that’s ever happened to me – two hares on the lane above Bullfer Grove ran towards me instead of away.

I think they were intrigued by the beep of the video button on my iphone,  and my leaf contact print dress blended in in the dappled shade of the hedge – their sight is not thought to be very good. so here is my Hare poem (in the Rialto) come to life!

they hovered and looked and sniffed and dithered for about five minutes,

in the end deciding to bound away back to the field.

earlier this week I walked down Cakes lane – got soaking wet feet and trouser legs, the rain has made the grass, cow parsley, docks, hogweed and the odd nettle, shoot up.

everything in full leaf, even the ash trees have decided it’s worth the risk.

Bullfer Grove is a better bet for dry feet on an early walk

I recorded a thrush singing in Cakes yesterday morning

it sounds quite nightingale-like at times

the hedgerows are as pretty as gardens.

I’m filling mine up with pots for Open Studios.

which has liberated the shed, I even cleaned out all the spiders and dead flies –

the shelves are still full

it’s so sad that some pots have been hanging about in there for ten years

so I am open to offers

and I think they look much better out in the garden than crowded on the floor of the shed.

two for tea

and tea for two

some wood-fired

some last year’s experiments

some just old friends.

some that have very definitely been overlooked, up on a high shelf. they need to be on their own.

the office has been de-officed and cleaned up, and will be my painting studio after this.

these are all from the last seven or eight months

the abstracts!

the evolution of the landscapes

from winter

and autumn to spring.

I do hope I see a few people!  then tomorrow afternoon Bimba is arriving. she will deserve a whole blog to herself

for the time being, this was taken in Spain. a slight lens distortion making her nose even longer than it really is.

It’s just been pointed out to me that I haven’t given the address of this event (which is on for 3 consecutive weekends by the way including this bank holiday Monday). I’m in the Norwich and Norfolk Open Studios catalogue, number 103. I am at The Granary, Sharrington Road, Bale, Norfolk, NR21 0QY

for hare afficionados, here is Cowper’s account of his tame hares – link

grey is a subtle colour

Posted jane -->on 7th May 2017

our skies are grey this week, with a cold easterly and then northerly, and then back to vicious easterly and fine damp mist.

my last painting was in a similar state,

but it seems soft grey skies can inspire something better

this is “A Little Rain Earlier” after today’s transformation. it is only 24 x 30cm.

despite the cold wild flowers are showing up in the lanes.

this bank of borage repeats year after year.

down Cake’s lane the ferns are all coming up strongly, male fern

and hart’s tongue like a green crown.

red campion start early and go on half the summer.

I’m not sure if the bracken isn’t a bit slow this year.

but all is greened up, except for the ash trees, which seem to be waiting for warmer weather.

I put these bean and chard plants in a week ago, watered them today as everything is dry. the state of their greenness entirely due to being raised in a greenhouse; the runner beans seem to have grown but nothing else has the larder in the seed to make such immediate progress.

 

abstract

Posted jane -->on 4th May 2017

it’s the season for acid yellow fields. there aren’t as many here as usual, it shifts around, but it certainly grabs one’s attention.

in fact I can’t smell it this year, the virus that laid me low also removed most of my sense of smell, but I remember the sickly sweet stink of it.

having painted the bluebell wood, I started wondering how to approach these landscapes, now all vibrant green with fresh leaves effervescing out of hedgerow and wood, studded occasionally with the strident yellow.

all I could come up with, it seemed, was yellow. completely abstract. in fact there are several layers here, and I have done quite a lot of mark making which is under the final coat of yellow; the layer under it is gold … small canvas, 30 x 30 cm. there’s safety in smallness, apparently. well, for a start, the canvas is not so expensive if I fail!

emboldened by this one I started a few more. I should explain that I stopped painting in around 2003 partly because I wanted to work in a more abstract way, but I couldn’t work out how to. so the pots were my abstract paintings, the glazes did it all for me.

since I started painting landscapes I have learnt so much about working with acrylics rather than oils, how to handle small scale, and transferred intuitive mark-making from working on clay to working in paint.

so now I have the skills to play with. I’m using water soluble wax crayons as well, so one could call this mixed media rather than acrylic.

the paintings are still very much about landscape.

a detail before this one was finished – it’s bigger, 50 x 60 cm

it is improvisatory, quite scary, feels like stepping over a cliff edge, but things start to come together and make sense as they build up.

I’m still paying attention on my walks

lucky enough to catch this holly blue in the little bit of warmth we had on the bank holiday

I don’t know if this abstraction is going to be total

here’s the second stage for another small one

but it might encourage me to put the paint aside for some time and come to terms with my ceramic practice.

in the mean time there are a few more canvases waiting in the workshop. and in three weeks I will have some thing to divert my attention – I am adopting a Spanish Galgo, found on the street, among so many thrown out after the hunting season. she is somewhere between a whippet and a greyhound, and will be arriving with a van full driven all the way up from Galgos del Sol in Murcia in the south of Spain. I hope the next bank holiday weather is warmer, otherwise she might need a coat.

 

the buttery blues of April

Posted jane -->on 24th Apr 2017

somehow April has been an odd month, cold and dry, but all I have done for days has been walking, getting fitter again, and making poems from found words. a bit of a rebellion going on there. the first week was in St Andrews, birdsong and family and trees and streams.

back in Norfolk before Easter, the weather was sunny and really quite warm, blossom and flowers everywhere

ash trees still holding back

but plenty of oaks with catkins out.

blackthorn dropping petals

soon the pattern of branch and twig will be obscured

in Bale wood primroses compete with brambles now that so many trees have fallen

sun and shadow painting the lane.

this greenery covers up the ditch that runs from the old moats and fishponds lost in the wood

and inspired a less accurate, more abstracted landscape

really I should make a very small painting like this, but that is what is under

the first one, left without all that copious greenery in the end.

the second playing with layers of paint and marks scratched through and even a bit of oil pastel for some darker marks.

I was quite pleased, but have been a bit stuck for further inspiration

tree shapes are not so easy to make into abstract paintings, even with the brilliant yellow of rape seed crops in huge blocks.

the bluebells are riotous in Bullfer grove

so, I thought I would have to make myself tackle them with paint in some non-traditional way.

firstly the blue has to be under almost everything, although the ground colour is green again, with plenty of medium to thin it.

more layers, more marks made with the palette knife tip

finished, lots of thick blue and thick green paint

popped on with the tip of the palette knife

scraped through with the palette knife

all over layers of thinned down paint brushed on with the biggest brushes I have

a bit of action painting …

looser than before. now I’m feeling braver!

 

bright days

Posted jane -->on 24th Mar 2017

March has been a sunny month with only one seriously wet day so far … I made myself do my round walk this week to take photos for painting material, but it was really a bit too much. is it just old age that’s making it so hard to get my strength back after all this long viral infection, or is this virus really more aggressive?

still very sad not to have my woolly little grey shadow with me, she ghosts my walks, such as they are.

at the bottom of Blood hill (apparently there was a civil war action there) there are ditches smothered in primroses

a wet part of the village, where a small shallow valley begins and the wood fills the wettest parts

you look up the hill to a horizon that hides the houses, where the rubbish scattered on the fields of a Romano-british farm turns up as pieces of worn ceramic.

I saw three large hares still in their thick winter coats

I am very sad that this track may soon disappear now the land belongs to a big agribusiness firm. once this huge open field was a patchwork of smaller ones, with trees and hedges, but “improvements” in the sixties removed all that.

cakes lane trees border the plough, there’s a painting in that.

closer in, the pattern of the trees and hedges and the lines of the plough are seductive.

in the green lane there are violets

and more flayed hedge. closer in, this photo invites a painting too.

my current “thing” is all the jackets of ivy the trees wear. it turns them into anthropomorphic shapes in the winter.

there’s a family group here ….

and the primroses are perfect.

another temptation.

here is the beginning of a cakes lane ivy tree painting. I have been using a warm tan base colour for the last few.

a layer of strong blue to help the sky

thickly painted with a knife at the top, green in the sky;

then over again with more blues, and the foreground/lower part very lightly brushed in with thin washes. where the paint is thick it has marks carved into it with the knife.

this scene is from the opposite direction of the first painting I did of the lane after it was flayed – the holly tree was the focal point.

always first the charcoal drawing, to get the feel of the tonal values and the shape of things.

which is simplified in the first pass

here it is, finished.

a close-up of the passage between the holly tree and the hedge tree – skating over previous brushwork with the palette knife …

mark-making and layers of colour

zooming in – the heart of the painting ….

at home, I have snakeshead fritillaries on my table, pots which I will plant out in my tiny wildflower meadow – in imitation of Magdalen college’s famous water meadow in Oxford.

 

primrose path

Posted jane -->on 16th Mar 2017

today felt like spring – I walked up part of cakes lane to find the primroses

there was a chiffchaff singing

and patches of primroses revealed by the recent cutting back of the hedges and scrub lining the hedges

at the fish shop

I bought the first crab of the season

caught on the chalk reef off Weybourne

where the special habitat makes them exceptionally sweet

then they have to walk all the way to the Humber estuary to breed.

I worked in my shed studio, which due to the sunshine and mild weather was warm enough without any heating – drew this charcoal up to prepare for a painting.

I hope to make it as near abstract as this one, completed yesterday.

working from photos it’s very tempting to try for realism

but starting like this helped develop it a bit differently.

this one, painted on Monday is not so abstract but has different more mysterious qualities.

here’s the working environment in our Village Hall for the monday painting group. in a group there’s a different dynamic, and it’s easy to be influenced by an atmosphere where realism and painterliness compete with difficulty.

the photo today’s drawing comes from has an architectural quality, where the trees, bare of leaves but full of ivy, become towers with different shaped cone tops

or even strange figures semaphoring early spring signs.

the forbidden path into the wood

Posted jane -->on 16th Feb 2017

following on from the post earlier this week, I did indeed work on one of those images.

firstly I loved the big arching trees on this one, so a charcoal drawing ensued –

standard A3 thick rough textured cartridge paper, I love this for charcoal. but this does not give me the view into the wood

that this photo does,

so I worked longer on this drawing (using a thick stick of charcoal which very excitingly gives much deeper darker tones – only four of these to a box, but they give much more flexibility than the thinner charcoal)

you might be startled at this green ground I worked on which meant to get greys I am using a violet-tinged white.

then I tried to ignore the photo and just work from the drawing

but I remembered how dark and interesting the foreground tree is in that photo (taken with hipstamatic) and layered pure ultramarine on and around it, and then ultramarine mixed with alazarin crimson which over the other layers gives a purplish black.

beginning to come together

as far as I got on Monday, and the last half hour really the artificial light made it quite difficult, but I was pleased with the light opening which has to have quite a lot of subtle stuff going on around it and through it and in the space beyond. and the main wood/trees seemed be working, but the sky needed more paint on it and I wanted to make that foreground tree a wee bit more subtle. and the right foreground is very sketchy.

bringing some of the pale green from the sky around the branches helped and then I got my complementary colour sense out and went over a lot of that strong blue with hit and miss scraped on-scraped off mauves

I knocked back a bit of branchy stuff from pale grey to soft brown

separated the foreground dark vegetation from the edge of the wood with some umber-ish paint

and had to stop myself fiddling with things too much, leaving that sketchy business of the puddles and the track pretty much as it was.

so here it is finished. and it has given me the impetus to try to do something from these photos next

this lovely beech tree

or maybe the stream in the wood

these photos don’t have the quality of light and brilliance that the hipstamatic ones do, so I will either have to use my own resources

or go for a walk on a day with good light and take some more.

 

a month wiped out

Posted jane -->on 11th Feb 2017

post Tilda walks have been more thoughtful and exploratory, but far and few between as I have had a very unpleasant and recurring virus for four weeks, still haven’t got my sense of smell back. it’s really knocked the stuffing out of me and next year I will be getting the flu jab, no more cocky “I never get flu or colds”

before it really got going I had a day drawing and painting at our village hall art group

working from a December photo (usually I get enthused about a very recent image)

cropped into a small rectangle of MDF 12″ x 16″

then I missed one week and the next week was a holiday week anyway, thank goodness, so I didn’t miss anything. at this time of year, when my studio is cold, even with the woodburner, the village hall Monday group is a lifeline.

we had some very grim cold weather, but perhaps it just felt worse with a temperature and a sore head!

just over a week ago I thought “I’ve got to beat this” – the weather was really quite balmy for a couple of days; I got a hundred snowdrops “in the green” and planted them over Tilda’s grave to join the many hundreds already in my wild garden,

along with the aconites under the old plum tree.

the mistle thrush was singing every morning, and it was beginning to feel like spring.

I ventured out for a long-ish walk – in fact more or less my usual circuit, but through the wood instead of around the edge – it did turn out to be far too far for my wobbly legs, but it was worth it.

everywhere pretty wet

a roe deer slipped away, I just saw her creamy hinder end, and thick winter coat

ivy and holly keep the wood a little warmer, but the ivy is all browsed off by the deer as high as they can reach.

it was a shock to find the lower half of Cake’s lane completely flayed. it seems three times as wide as before – one side had not been done for a very long time. they cut it every three years, and it is necessary, the brambles and blackthorn would end up blocking it. and we will be able to see the primroses properly in the spring.

although a bit bald, a great subject for a painting – the white light looking through the holly tree, and the way the pale ripped stems of the hedge interact tone-wise with the dark tree and the lighter deciduous trees around it, and lots of texture. and the dark right-hand foreground trees in the hedge, all made mysterious and translucent by the hipstamatic app I use to take a lot of these photos.

the ground lattice-patterned by the tractor’s wheels too.

halfway through ….

I might just need to put a bit more lattice-y stuff into the bottom righthand corner.

yesterday I went into the woods again, not so far this time, I didn’t want the virus to come roaring back now I’m feeling so much stronger.

a grey day, but it’s a magical place

if you meet the gamekeeper it’s shooting land – but he’s been quite polite to me when I’ve run into him, even with two dogs in tow.

once the village kids played in here, and in living memory it was common land, appropriated by the local landowner to plant these oaks.

the track here is strictly “private” but I blatantly walked down here.

the old pheasant pens and feeders are this end of the wood, but I don’t see any signs of rearing birds here these days

looking out across a field to where the woods expand across to “Botany Bay”, full of roe deer and red too …

deep ditches; springs start on the gravel ridge that is the beginning of the Holt Cromer Ridge, a huge terminal moraine from the last Ice Age which gives North Norfolk its heaths and hills.

the focus of my next painting will be this entrance to the wood with its misty light and huge willow tree.

at this viewpoint it’s a black hole, but those trees are very exciting.

it will take a couple of charcoal drawings to get to grips with it I think; I’m looking forward to Monday.

 

 

 

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