Pochade - Brant's Ghyll

The 30th June was not a bad day to go off painting, not too hot and only a slight chance of rain, well, that's what I had thought before I set off. I had always wanted to picture Brant's ghyll resurgence ever since I had first seen it, but because it is what it is, a small cave and a spring at the foot of a small limestone cliff, it is therefore a fairly boring subject matter, the difficulty here was to at least attempt to make it interesting, a feat of which I have to admit I have failed. I have visited Brant's Ghyll on a number of times in conditions as varied as snow to searing heat, but whatever the condition, it would seem that the light never affects this place. I find the site of huge interest as a geologist, a natural spring at the foot of a massive limestone block, at the junction where the limestone meets the more impermeable slates and flagstones of the Horton group of rocks, and as water cannot pass through, makes an exit along this spring line. The reservoir for this water is deep under the Pen-y-ghent massif, in the speilogically-elusive master cave. I heard a story that at one point for a long time this spring never flowed, and this was a dry valley, but during one deluge, something changed in the internal organs of the cave system, and Brant's ghyll flowed again. It is a place of solitude, not many people know about it and is often overlooked as people tend to bypass it on their way up the well-worn tracks along the pennine way or up pen-y-ghent.

Getting to the place where I wanted to sit, in the valley bottom, was another challenge, half-walking half-sliding down a muddy slope, and ending in a heap on a rocky outcrop inches away from a good ducking in the stream itself. Having set up on the other side of the stream a rough sketch was made in pencil which placed the general composition, incidentally I had visited the place often before and had decided on the composition from those trips, so the hard part was over, and now I thought the easy part was to slap the paint on the board. I had assumed this would be the simple bit, but the weather had plans of its own, a series of showers brought work to a halt while I sought shelter upslope among the trees, this would have been fine if I had been using say Acrylics, but with water-soluble oils it is a different story...

Brant's Ghyll Resurgence 8"x6" Oil on board



What would have normally taken about an hour and a half to paint was finished in 3 hours, with several (long) paues while rain stopped play. I think for a larger painting more mood has to be employed, maybe more regression with mist around the cave enterance. It does feel a mystical, magical place as all of these natural springs do, and if I am going to paint it 'properly' that is the feeling I would like to achieve. I'm not saying I am not satisfied with the pochade as it is, but that's what it is - a sketch for something bigger and more profound. I know people would say 'why not just take a photo', a photo is all well and good, but it does not serve as an accurate aide memoire for the bigger picture, and this is the main thing I have been understanding in my forays outside with my little pochade box.

My little pochade box.