Fountains Abbey

Got a phone call from the mother-in-law on Saturday seeing if we fancied visiting Fountains Abbey on Sunday morning, they said they'd be there at 9.30am... Ha! Getting the kids to school for 9 is bad enough but to load up the car with the various bits of kit required for the terrible twosome is hard graft. Anyway we eventually rolled into the carpark at fountains at 11...

 Neptune, Fountains. Oil on Board 10"x8"

Remarkably the day wasn't wet, it was one of those crisp Autumn days which are ideal for photography, and there were quite a number of visitors with their cameras out. I have to admit the two paintings I did this week are from these photos, as with children whose attention span is like a pair of goldfish, the prospect of sitting and sketching anything for longer than 5 minutes is met with sighs and groans; so out with the camera. OK so it is cheating, but anything for a quiet life...

For both of these I blocked in the colours in the underpainting with acrylics - this was excellent for the job and perfectly formed the base for the oils, and most importantly dried quickly so I could 'get on with it'.  I'm curious though - would a purist call this style of underpainting 'cheating' or shrug it off as a timesaver? Regardless, these two were knocked out in two days as I was 'in the zone' and nothing was putting me off. I really enjoyed painting these and although they are small make an excellent pairing.

Temple of Piety, Fountains; Oil on Board 10"x8"

After a stroll round the water garden the plan was to have lunch at the cafe next to the lake, however as it was the only dry Sunday this year, the place was throng and abhorring queueing with everyone else for an overly-expensive sandwich and pot of coffee, a pub lunch for the family was necessary - anything to avoid queues... A couple of miles from Fountains Abbey is an excellent inn, serving wonderful sunday lunches (NOT a carvery - I can't stand carveries, it's another form of queueing after all), and would highly reccomend the Galphay Inn for a post-stroll lunch.

National Trust : Fountains Abbey
The Galphay Inn

Forging a Path

Last year, when we had a summer, we took a number of photos of the kids at play in the fields around the house. A nice, simple composition which utilises light effects rather than detail, I painted this one on a crimson ground as there is not much of that primary in the painting itself, and I hoped to conteract this by using red as a ground, and occasionally it filters through.

"Forging a path" Oil on canvas 20" x 16"

The light streaming through the trees was a last minute addition, having showed the 'completed' image to the wife, she asked "is it finished?" as the initial composition had a break in the trees through which the sky could be seen, and when this was portrayed on canvas had the resemblence to a very pale sky-blue blob in the middle of the trees (her words, not mine)... I had to agree with her, it looked - well wrong. So I scraped back the blob, darkened it out and slapped in some lime green which I smeared across the canvas, all of this must have taken about 15 minutes, from her appraisal to the finished article. It just shows what can be achieved given the need.

Stone Sentinel, Moughton

Between Crummackdale and Ribblesdale is an upland block of Carboniferous limestone overlying Silurian siltstone, part of the Ingleborough massif called Moughton, which I believe is translated as 'pile of rocks'. The unconformity (between the Silurian and the Carboniferous) is of huge interest to the geologist where the limestone is horizontally-bedded on top of the steeply-dipping Silurian siltstones; the limestone on top of the plateau is of interest to the botanist also with numerous (sometimes rare) calciphiles inhabiting the cracks (grykes) between the limestone blocks (clints). The area is one of peace and solitude and a wonderful place to relax and chill out (quite literally).

The first time I explored the area I came across this stone structure, this cairn sits atop the limestone pavement near Long Scar, being in that frame of mind I considered it then, and wondered why someone had gone to the time and effort of building it. It stands about 6ft high, and is obviously of some antiquity given the amount of lichen / moss growth, it could be a waymarker - as there is a safe route down Long Scar not so far away from it, but it's still a distance away - personally I like to think it was built by some bored shepherd as a walling 'apprentice-piece'.

On a very (very) cold day last November I decided to go for a bit of a paint, (and spurred on having read one of David Bellamy's books intimating at painting in all weathers - although I draw the line at rain and snow) and equipped with my pochade box I climbed the path close to Dry-Rigg Quarry and onto the Moughton uplands. It was perishingly cold, but hugely relaxing, and as I was slapping the paint onto the pochade a stoat came out of hiding to have a look what I was doing, normally I don't like visitors, but I didn't begrudge the curiousity of a stoat.

I wasn't originally planning on this one being a 'biggie', but with a moment of inspiration I had a bash at it, changing the compsition somewhat through the process of the painting. Having painted it I know what I could do better and if I re-do this or painting some more limestone scenery I will be able to apply these technique changes.

The Stone Sentinel, Moughton Oil on canvas 18" x 14"

Regardless I like the feeling of solitude and drearyness (again), and I am certainly inspired enough to have another bash at Moughton's karst landscape. I reccomend anyone to go there and experience the lunar landscape, it has a feeling all to its own.

http://www.davidbellamy.co.uk/

Barns

Barns.

I have sketched and drawn numerous barns around the vicinity (of Horton), and there are hundreds to choose from, and in this post I have thrown in a few of my sketches. I suppose like sheep and walls they are another ubiquitous symbol of the Dales, but sadly a lot are in disrepair - the maintaining and rebuilding costs of the barns far outweigh their use. Originally these laithes were used for the overwintering of cattle and fodder storage, they are numerous so the heavy items (hay) did not have to be transported far from where they were harvested, and manure from the cattle over winter could be spread on the nearby fields. However with modern agricultural techniques, transportation of materials is far easier therefore reducing the necessity of numerous barns.

But as ruins in themselves these have a strangely romantic quality, and aside from being practical buildings they stir imaginations, why is this? What is it about ruined barns that drags us in, what is it about these weather-worn broken-down buildings?

In the landscape of the Pennines (away from my local area) the barn is depicted as a black monolith at the conjunction of black walls against a field of yellow ochre, with a feeling of tempest in the air. Two words in literature echo this emotion, Wuthering Heights.

The paintings of Peter Brook mirror this feeling, his depiction of the field barn in the landscape epitomises the West Yorkshire Pennines, especially those painted against a winter scene, they have a true 'Yorkshire' feeling about them. One can look at a Peter Brook image of a barn in winter and automatically place the part of the county it depicts, and it is interesting to note Peter Brook commonly used sand mixed in with his paint which added  extra texture to his paintings.

So because of these barns were built using locally available material (avoiding transportation costs), they reflect the local geology and therefore mirror the landscape of their surroundings. Where I live, in the heart of Limestone Country, the barn takes on a different persona. Local limestone is used for the walls and laithes and overall appears as a much brighter, lighter (dare I say it, a 'happier') place than the brooding sandstone and gritstones of the southern Pennine scenery.

http://www.peterbrookart.co.uk/

Wild Boar Fell and Mallerstang

It's taken me quite a while to get round to this painting. I tooks some photos of the scene some years ago while walking around Grisedale, the day was a cold, frosty February morning, and as I approached the buildings at High Shaw Paddock with Wild Boar Fell in the distance this was the scene that greeted me. With the highlighted farm in the middle ground the fells in the distance took on a bleak(er) look. I painted the scene in two sittings, allowing the first covering to dry before proceeding, but still maintains an 'alla prima' look.

I had some fun with the foreground - I wasn't bothered after all it was painted as a trial piece on a bit of primed hardboard. I 'borrowed' a plastic brush from my daughter to achieve the texture of the reeds and plenty of paint with scratching and blending with my fingers, and I quite like it - it achieved it's purpose and now that cheap plastic brush has a new home (apologies to my daughter).

Wild Boar Fell and Mallerstang, Oil on Board 16" x 12"

So, even though I painted this as a 'trial' piece, I am pleased with the way it turned out, and it gives a feeling of the drearyness of the scene; it shows another face of the dales - away from the brighter landscapes of the Limestone Dales of the southern and western half, and the more open landscapes of Wensleydale. This, one of the northern dales, the landscape reflects the geology, a hard, dark gritstone, more akin to the sandstones of the Mid-Pennines.

Jervaulx - A Cracking Bit of Wensleydale

A Cracking Bit of Wensleydale.
Apologies for the cheesy title, but this part of lower Wensleydale is a fantastic place to while away a few hours. The owners of the Abbey have done, and are doing a wonderful job of maintenence, and any visitor to the abbey ruins are highly recomended to visit the excellent tea shop / restaurant across the road. We visited the abbey a couple of times last year with the family, and had a great day, sketching and painting in the ground while the children explored and picnicked. I made some sketches but the painting was from a number of photos taken on the better of the two days.

Jervaulx - compsitional sketch

I made the compositional sketch in one afternoon from a couple of photos, and set to with the painting. I didn't rush this one, initially the main colours were underpainted in acrylic (which I find dry much darker than when initially laid) hence the blue of the sky is much darker than I originally intended, and rather than looking for texture I was trying to achieve more flatter areas of colour, so that any variations (e.g. the party, the trees and the building structure) would not just stand out tonally, but also texturally.

A Cracking Bit of Wensleydale - Oil on Canvas 20" x 16"

The title of the painting came to me while I was laying down the acrylic underpainting, having just watched one of Nick Park's animations with the kids, and have to say I was grinning inanely while slapping on the paint. I quite like the painting although it's not to my wife's taste. For me the learning process with the tones of the middle-distance trees was an important one. In the past I have found full summer foliage a bit of a weak point, but following this now feel more confident with this aspect of landscape painting.

Incidentally Jervaulx is a corruption of Yore Vale, i.e. the valley of the River Ure, which flows nearby, although the modern valley is named after one of the main towns through which the river flows - i.e. Wensleydale. And at the head of Wensleydale is the creamery where the cracking cheese of that name is made.

http://www.wensleydale.co.uk/
http://www.jervaulxabbey.com/