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..