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the colours of May

Posted jane -->on 29th May 2018

most of the wild flowers in May are creamy white – cow parsley, guelder rose, bird cherry – with blues – the bluebells and the forget-me-nots – and red campion, although there are still plenty of yellow dandelions of course. but the fields are dominated by the strident yellow of canola, or rape-seed, through April and May.

accompanied by the sickly sweet smell, and much spraying of chemicals

however, I decided to make the most of it and managed a couple of paintings that are almost pure colour.

the first a small board, an old early painting gessoed over – lots of nice texture. starting with the horizon and my new regime of runny paint ..

I arrived at this, fairly free with marks and spots of balancing reds and blues

and scrapes and scratches

the brightest colours more or less hidden – cerulean just peeping through the yellow in a close-up.

 

meanwhile Cakes lane has been a froth of green and white

here is the bird cherry, almost like a wild lilac, with its own scent

although last year I was reluctant to engage with all that green in paint, I thought I’d give it a go this time.

starting with some drawing

all those wiggly branches and the blue sky …

hard to know where to start on the greens ..

but I used a lot of other colours and contrasts and textures .. quite happy with this. it’s a canvas 50 x 50 cm.

as for the bluebells – isn’t it frustrating trying to photograph them! the blue always looks so faded.

what I love is the wood with the pale green light between the tree trunks and the soft new beech leaves

I tried to paint them last year, and got an interesting abstract design but too dark and formal, not enough happening with the paint, so I got it out, threw various things at it and worked back in

I have so many more tools on my belt now.

all that blue called me back to the yellow, and a bigger version of the canola/rape field. more colour under it, bolder!

I really had fun with mark-making and with the colours I put back in over the yellow at the end

close-ups show you better

it would be an abstract if it wasn’t for the horizon strip

I saw this a week or so later when the yellow had abated

might be the next painting. meanwhile however I am trying to finish a load of pots I made last summer – have managed the bisque firing, and am glazing for a firing this week. then there will have to be another later, there are plenty of bisque pots up there.

my violet delights

Posted jane -->on 17th Apr 2018

back in Norfolk for a week of rain or mist or fog and a galga with a foot cut on broken glass in newcastle on the way home … then at the weekend at last the veils lifted, hesitantly at first … my garden full of flowers which have raised their heads since the sun came out:

lots of hellebores which have been biding their time in the cold weather …

the grass as usual dotted with cowslips

the blackthorn doing its duty, but so wet last week I’m not sure if any of these flowers will have been pollinated, and now the petals are falling, white confetti …

and the rowan well on its way to flowering.

the hellebores are actually not as full of flowers as they were last year, but there are a couple of seedlings up as well.

at last B’s foot closed up enough to risk a walk … she has been belting round the garden so I thought about time to get back to normal. there were two small but deep gashes under the biggest pad of her foot; she’s had a course of antibiotics, but the fuss made about saline washes was ridiculous, water all over the kitchen rather than on her foot.

primroses in the wood

 

although the rest of the undergrowth cleared out by the deer, they must not like primroses

cakes lane has big mounds of them

yesterday a lovely day, sunshine and big clouds

I am inspired for more painting

but still looking at the ground for the wild violets in Clip Street … they are profuse in places

from proper violet colour

to white, and you can smell their sweetness

when the wind doesn’t blow it away

on the banks

I think B more interested in some mouse or mole here …

the big clouds dominating the landscape

are just what I need for my Cley18 paintings

yesterday was our Village Hall painting group day

I have been watching Lewis Noble’s youtube films of painting outdoors in the peak district  so I took a board and  canvas outside and flicked paint and water (treated with flow improver – plain water disrupts the pigments) with a brush.

in the sun they dried very quickly and provide a great background to work into , keeping the paint fairly translucent

now I have a way to get into starting the enormous canvas I have prepared for the final version

I ended up with this on the board, today I’m going to work into the canvas and see if I can take it further with more paint. tomorrow when the wind is less aggressive I will haul the big canvas outside and throw jugfuls of wet paint at it.

radically expressionist landscape painting

Posted jane -->on 22nd Mar 2018

the last couple of paintings have been the result of a leap into the almost unknown –

the braver I have got in my sketch book/art journal

the bolder the paintings themselves. this is the ultimate study for the catalogue image for Cley18. it started out as an old canvas from the studio of my friend Duncan, who horribly suddenly and sadly died in August; a bit flimsy to be honest, and a coarser weave than I like to use, and horrors! cotton … which doesn’t ping back at you like linen. but that freed me up to be a lot more experimental, because I wasn’t so self-conscious about the beautiful object, a nice linen canvas!

my main aim to start with was to try to cover the weave texture. a lot of this is liquid acrylic paint scrawled on straight out of the little pot it comes in.

then all went horribly wrong – horizon too high, flat sky, tree too big, no recession of horizon

so I painted over the sky and lowered the horizon, did some work on the foreground, and started in with the liquid paint again, and my new water-soluble graphite crayon

taking this further with the scrawled title – ‘Touching Distance – and funnily enough as soon as I got that cerulean, cobalt and creamy white on the horizon it started to recede

then I got the kitchen implement out, a rubber spatula, and gallons of sticky cream and grey coloured paint mixed up, and pulled that about over the top of the colour, wet on wet

working into the paint with the edge of the spatula

while everything was still wet

I’m really excited by this

the text is thoroughly embedded and only half legible

this is something like 70 cm by 50 or 60 cm, I forgot to measure it. the final painting for Cley18 will be 78″ x 48″ so there is a good deal of work needed to get this kind of thing operating on that scale.

one more painting got done before I left for Scotland. this is on a canvas covered board – a kind of support which I have not used for about thirty years!

the base coat (I am working on the white primer coat now, no pink underlayer) quite liquid paint, drawn through with an old biro

lots of water soluble graphite. and then to finish I attacked the sky with the spatula and greys and creams as on the larger painting.

now I won’t be able to paint until the second week of April or so, but I’m happy to have made these leaps in the past few weeks.

 

 

the great snow sky

Posted jane -->on 1st Mar 2018

it’s been a Siberian week – we are used to these cold easterlies in Norfolk,

but usually they don’t bring snow – and are not quite as cold. though I do remember two weeks of wind frost when working with horses on a farm near Swaffham in my mid twenties. carrying water in buckets for forty horses probably started my arthritic neck vertebrae!

yesterday was beautiful, pristine whiteness and sun between snow showers, though starting to drift .. today is grim and cruel, a grey wind full of cold damp blowing at forty miles per hour, and a few places in the village blocked off by snowdrifts

Bimba kind of thought the drifts were fun, but on the whole much too cold for her poor toes …

I’ve had a burst of painting over the last week, inspired by Betty Krause … keeping a sketch book is something I haven’t done for a long time … but I’ve taken a leaf from her “warm-up” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOqXB7KB01Q&feature=youtu.be  

things have loosened up and I’m finding the benefit of multi-layering

the brush is back!

and the paint is on thicker

 

the finished painting – 70 x 50 cm on linen

at one point it looked like this which is pretty scary

also these are now officially mixed media as I’m using crayons and oil pastels. that does sound better than acrylic ….

more sketch book, or “art journal” I think that’s probably an american term – going for a walk in the snow showers. I used a stencil for the white blobs, cut from a sheet of newspaper.

and the same day I painted this – snow showers on Monday morning. 60 x 45 cm on board

this was the next day’s journal

and stages of yesterday’s ….

almost there but the blue too strong

based on this photo from yesterday morning

so today another painting on board

a scary early stage. working with it flat on the table

more work needed on the sky

“the great snow sky” 60 x 45 cm

and today’s sketchbook

progressed to this … but I think I’m leaving it as a totally abstract thing

more photos to work from – this cloud is wonderful

more of the drifting snow

all very exciting. especially as I can’t walk more than to the edges of the village without uncomfortable depth of snow/slippery icy roads/deep drifted snow, and I’m not driving anywhere until things get better. all the more time to paint!

 

 

back to landscape

Posted jane -->on 19th Feb 2018

more efforts painting landscape –

this is a detail from the winter ashes I painted two weeks ago. one of the things I have brought from the still life painting of the last few months is this pink ground. I’m finding it more helpful than the green I was using, warmer than grey and brown which I have also tried. it’s a very translucent pink, and I mix it up from translucent white with some ochre and a little red.

I’m also using thicker paint, and a gloss glazing medium when I want more transparency, and working wet into wet (you have to be quick to do that with acrylics)

for Cley18 I’m going to be producing one large painting, six foot six inches wide, so I’m beginning to make small studies

one of the possible subjects is this wooded hillside, on my projected line from Bale to Cley; last week I painted this little study, 30 cm x 30 cm.

I want to keep to this time of year, or early spring, before the trees have any leaves,

so you can see the bones of the landscape

today I had a go at a version of this, which had sun and cloud lighting up some of the trees

it’s a start, at 70 cm x 50 cm, and also incorporates some text, which I want to add to the paintings now, it’s become such an important part of what I do.

this is actually from a Farrow and Ball ad ….

but it seems very apt for Cley18

 

I stuck a print-out ripped-edged on the canvas (acrylic makes this easy)

and painted into it, then partly over it, so it’s well embedded into the texture. believe is the clearest part.

I’m hoarding phrases to do with distance, viewing and perspective. Spitting Distance is one I like.

collecting skies too

this is looking west from the western edge of the Bayfield estate. the trees on the horizon are the shelter belt of conifers on the eastern edge of the Holkham estate. not the right direction for this project, but I think there’s a painting here at some point.

another around my line on the map.

Bayfield has so many gorgeous little hills covered in trees

but Bale can answer back with this …. and I think I am going to have to try to do less, the last two paintings when I look at the photos of stages, I’m persuaded that I should have stopped well before I did!

snow, gales, sunshine

Posted jane -->on 13th Feb 2018

candlemas has been and gone, the snowdrops now at their best, though they started to poke through the leaf litter in early January

and the snow has been and gone

the first lot thawed almost as soon as it was down, rivulets pouring out of field drains

pools lying on other less well-drained fields

Cakes lane still flooded at its entry

the snow freshens up the poor old browny-grey landscape at this end of winter

and for a few hours or a day or so the reflected light is glorious

every muddy lane is magically transformed into a pretty picture

a scene I painted without snow

suddenly demands rethinking

but the temporary transformations soon dull to slush and mud.

Bimba’s first snow was exciting at home in the garden

but now the grass is cut up into muddy paw sized pockets

and the frost and wind have taken over, drying the land up a little at last.

 

new walks and blue hair

Posted jane -->on 28th Jan 2018

over Christmas I discovered new walks, thanks to family staying, dyed my hair (slightly) blue/aqua, and saw three otters.

the otters were on the Glaven at Bayfield, where the permissive path is beside the river.

Bayfield is the new walk discovery. when I came back to Norfolk and these permissive paths were opened up they didn’t have the signage they have now and I couldn’t make a circular walk, so I was put off. I am very pleased to have found the “bird walk” and am going once a week. it’s nice to be completely off road, and the landscape is so varied it’s always offering new views. also it’s on my mapped line between Bale and Cley Eye for my Cley18 project, so painting this landscape is something on my mind now.

this is a 12 inch square canvas of one of the views from the permissive path. first attempt at landscape for a few months now.

 

the Glaven is one of our North Norfolk chalk streams; here at Bayfield dredging has stopped and the embankments removed so the river is held back by the absorbent reed beds and wet meadow when it floods, and hosts eels as well as otters and trout.

the other two thirds of the walk is through a landscape of glacial deposits – sand and gravels in uneven and surprising little hills and rolling ups and downs, often covered in bracken and woodland – some pine, some mostly oak. Often at this time of year one encounters the pheasant shoot; the estate derives important income from this. last week three roe deer broke cover as I approached the woodland, then around some corners and up the track I came across the beaters, sentinel still, waiting for the guns to start.

some of the oak trees are extraordinary and very old – one inspired this little painting

I wanted to have the paint very thick, which is not so easy with acrylic; its watery base can be too fluid – you have to wait a little for it to thicken up, but not to start solidifying. I intended to paint with brush, but ended up using my trusty palette knife, due to the paint’s consistency.

Cake’s lane is still an important walk for me

I don’t always want to be getting the car out and my old village routes need their bounds beating regularly

a very wet winter means we do get covered in mud sometimes. all the pools in the wood are full and the ditches running over in places.

the weather being so changeable gives opportunities for staring across this horizon a lot – the beginning of my mapped line.

although we have had frosts they have not been much more than a touch here near the coast. one morning after the night had been wet and then the temperature dropped, my car was covered in beautiful frost flower patterns.

 

 

winter light

Posted jane -->on 20th Dec 2017

there is a compensation for the shortness of days and the lessening of light in December.

it’s the softness and warmth of the light around dusk

which enfolds the countryside in a magical cocoon of pinkish glamour

taking Bimba for a short second walk at this time of day

especially in the green lane

or Clip street where the outlook is over towards the sea

the light and the sky always a reward.

or on frosty mornings, when the light twinkles sequins in the leaves

outlines sculptural shapes

like jewellery

and we stand and gawp at the magnificence.

or we listen for geese

it’s been Brent geese this week, inland from their usual coastal marsh haunts for easier pickings on the winter wheat in the cold

and they did get a few days peace on this field

until their presence was noted and a bird scarer installed – a huge bang with a big puff of smoke, and they were up and away … now the weather has warmed up so I hope they are back on the saltmarshes.

one sunny but cold morning we explored parts of Bullfer grove I’d not bothered with before.

a path around the far side was rather inviting

amongst fallen leaves which the evening before had glowed copper

still bright in daylight

the low sun picks out the hedges and trees

and bracken in a slow fire.

this morning it’s much milder, and gloomier

in the soft grey light. I have to think about three large paintings looking towards the coast at Cley, at Cley 18 for which I’ve been selected to make good my proposal …..

though I have a few more of these still life paintings to work on.

 

november is the real autumn

Posted jane -->on 19th Nov 2017

harvested sugarbeet fields bring extraordinary numbers of geese inland; skeins of calling pinkfoot are the most heart-lifting sight and sound of autumn and winter in norfolk, adding to the dominance of our skies as the trees lose their leaves.

it is a slow process, continuing through november

field maples in the hedge hold onto leaves that are bright yellows freckled with copper and red for six to eight weeks

hazel leaves suddenly seem enormous, saucer-sized

mellow yellow with caramel burnt edges and veins

plenty on the ground too, fringed with water crystals in the slight morning frosts

in the sunshine that goes with the frosty mornings warm light incandesces maple leaves

I found the secret beech groves in the wood again

the spring-fed pools in the wood are empty, we have had a dry summer and autumn

despite that there is lush growth in parts of the green lane which necessitates the wearing of wellies. I have not had a single pair of walking boots which will withstand the soaking for long.

bare ash trees make long shadows in the low sun

my spanish hound burns energy into heat, I don’t think she needs a coat unless it’s really miserable out, indoors she is a very efficient hot water bottle.

I expect to see this oak hold onto its leaves well into december, every year it’s the same.

painting leaf colour

I have moved to indoor subjects –

they glow in the window light

inspiring another series now the dahlias are finished

the pink undercoat was such a useful discovery I have continued to use it

once all these leaves are gone I will have to go back to the sky and the bare branches

but for now these are very satisfying

though I am still finding subjects to come back to

wild colours

old viewpoints and new directions

 

full-on colour

Posted jane -->on 5th Nov 2017

autumn afternoon walks mean that I often catch marvellously coloured skies

colours are warmer, glowier

burning brighter

inspiring new paintings

plants show up surprisingly against a still green backcloth

the dahlias are still volcanic in Paul’s garden

joining the golden late sunshine

keeping our mental toes warm

I hope there’s not a frost tonight or it will all be over

I have had them indoors

and been painting them

against the window light. the rosehips and the turquoise ocean bowl by my friend Jan Lewin Cadogan act as counterpoint

although the pots in this composition also engage me

it’s the flowers that are centre stage. getting the acrylic paint to create the burn, the red light.

the pink undercoat helps to make that glow.

I just picked some more – another painting to do ….

and so ….. another small canvas 12 x 12 inches (30 cm)

now I feel a bit addicted to painting dahlias …..

 

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