Out and About - Pochades in Arnside

There has been some fantastic bright sunlight recently which prompted me after a couple of days refurbishing the studio to get out of the house and do some real painting. When I say real painting I actually mean en-plein air, although I don’t want to sound too snobbish saying it. I was reading a blog extolling the virtues about painting small, and how the amount of kit you carry can impact on your ability to paint ‘on the spot’, now I desperately try to limit the amount of kit I carry, and I know I carry way too much; flask of coffee, sandwiches, tripod, camera, sketchbook, backup sketchbook, sepia pens, black pens, a whole host of pencils, charcoal, watercolours, water,  pochade box c/w 12 paints of varying colours and about 4 spare boards, white spirit, rags, backup rags, knife, kitchen sink, etc etc...? Hang on have I missed ought? Oh yeah - brushes... On more than one occasion my painting trip has been curtailed due to lack of one or more of these ‘essential’ implements.

Pochade Setup at New Barns.

Recently my wife bought me a little knapsack - I say ‘little’ in comparison to the 50litre bergen I have been hauling my gear in previously, and this little knapsack has proved its worth in  forcing me to cut down the amount  I carry, begging the question is ‘that’ really necessary... and its worked! So now, on a pochading trip I carry the 5 (carefully selected) brushes (in a roll), the pocahde box and tripod c/w 2 boards and about 6 colours, white spirit and rags, one sketchbook and pens (for thumbnails), charcoal and pencil (in the brush roll) and thats it! except for the coffee, and even that seems a little too much sometimes.

So Arnside, yes I know its not in the Dales, but it is still painting and therefore by my rules permissible in this blog.

Arnside - Chilly February

A couple of beautiful crisp days at the beginning of the month heralded a new start to the en plein-air year, cold enough to keep the painting loose (i.e. wanting to get it finished quickly to move on and warm up) and sunny enough to provide light for the subject. If you don’t know it Arnside is one of the hidden gems of the Lancashire / Cumbria coast, relatively unspoiled the entire mass of Silverdale affords numerous boxes to tick for the landscape painter, coastal, estuary, hills, woods, moor, ruins; it has been a place I have often wanted to paint in but never managed to get there with pochade box and have a crack at it. However on days like these it can be a popular little place, and there are oodles of dogwalkers c/w their canine companions so it is very difficult to avoid the critical gaze of passers-by, which by now I have taken for granted and for this reason I can make the excuse it takes more than the self-allotted one hour to knock out a half reasonable pochade due to the fact I am chatting for a good proportion of the time. As a relative newcomer to the en-plein-air lark I find these distractions welcoming, and don’t at all mind breaking off for a natter, after all it gives me time to glimpse (rather than focus) at the work rather than focus on it.

Pochade - Beechwood House, Arnside - Oil on Board 8"x6"

One thing that did catch me out was the turn of the tide, now as a sailor I understand the tides, but even still I was caught out by the speed of the tide at Arnside, as I was painting on the day after this years Super Blue Moon, I forgot about the exceedingly high tide and for one view the tripod was moved four times, eventually giving up. Arnside has its own tidal bore, not someone who chunters endlessly about the moon and the height of the sea, but a tidal wave which hurtles up an estuary. Now when I say hurtles, that could be applied to the Severn Bore which attracts surfers, the Kent Bore is a lot less ‘spectacular’ but still worth while to watch if only to understand the power of the tide and still attracts some hardy kayakers.

New Barns Bay - 8" x 6"

I don’t usually sell these pochades; they are after all sketches, aide memoirs to some future masterpiece or more likely to be stored in the sea chest under my worktable in the studio which is already brimming with views yet to be painted. Alwyn Crawshaw has a lot to answer for with his ‘atmosphere sketches and ‘enjoyment sketches’, I just enjoy painting them too much.

Arnside - 8" x 6"

New Barns, Arnside - 8" x 6"