Pochade - Moughton Nab from Top O'Feizor Nick.

Bit of a mouthful for a title, could be 'Early Autumn, Above Bark House', anyway geographically speaking the valley in the view has no name; it connects Wharfe and Austwick with Ribblesdale at Helwith Bridge. The hill in the distance to the right of the photograph below is Pen-y-Ghent, and I thought it churlish to omit this beauty from the pocahde, however I didn't want it stealing the show so compositionally it was rejected... The paint is still wet on this one, and took me longer than the allotted 1 hour to paint due to the amount of people stopping for a chat, plus I wasn't really rushing it, but I'm still calling it a pochade regardless.

I always found it a bit unnerving painting in public, and this is quite a thoroughfare with a number of walkers, runners and the obligatory flock of hawkers (not trying to sell anything - but taking their Harris Hawk out for some exercise) passing by all-too-often. Actually today I rather enjoyed it, passing the time to chat while pretending to be busy, more often than not the conversation started with an apologetic ice-breaker such as "sorry for scaring the sheep" or "sorry about my dog, he's just curious"...

Moughton Nab from Top O'Feizor Nick; Oil on Board 8"x6"

This is painted on MDF board - which the wife uses as a backing board for her framing, gessoed up (3 coats) and sanded down, a coat of acrylic burnt sienna provides an excellent Autumnal ground on which to lay down the paint. Another revelation which I have discovered is the use of turpentine; for years I have been using white spirit to thin the paint, but turps does it so much better, although I still go armed with the white spirit to clean the brushes. I was purposefully limiting the palette with this, keeping to Ivory Black and Tit White, Lemon Yellow (mixed with the black makes a strangely accurate green), Ult Blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ochre, (with the tiniest smattering of pthalo green). Although I have managed to cut the paint usage down, I still take more brushes into the field than is necessary or practicable, and end up cleaning the lot of them. Some disciplines have not yet sunk in - and I guess this is the result of having no formal training...

I also thought I would put a picture of the new and improved pochade setup, the box is fitted to a small but portable camera tripod which does make walking to the location a damn sight easier than lugging a large portable table easel up a mountain slope, but am limited to this samller box.

I would appreciate any comments about anything on this blog, as I have so far received zero... any feedback positive or negative is a bonus - shows someone is actullay reading this..

Furry Coo

Furry Coo, Oil on Board 8" x 10"

Oil on Board 8" x 10". Highland cattle seem to be the order of the day recently on the lower fells of Ribblesdale. A small herd inhabit the fells above Stainforth and their shaggy exteriors provide great subject matter, and as well as these another herd of Belties (Belted Galloways) have made their presence felt in the field across from these chaps. The steely-grey sky is typical of these dales, and its a feature I think I should replicate more in my paintings; having just picked the kids up, as I was driving home I noticed this very same coloured sky and the thought hit me to paint more of this.