The Ruined Church - Bishop Thornton

St John's church, Bishop Thornton. 

Something a bit on the Gothic side for a change. Inspired by Casper David Frederick's The Abbey in the Oakwood, this ruined church has enchanted me for 35 or so years, ever since I came across a photo in Richard Muir's excellent Shell Guide to the English Landscape. This solitary tower isolated in an island of tombs never fails to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I hope to have represented my feelings about this captivating place with this painting, the arms of the bare trees clawing out to the tower like bony hands, the gravestones are probably more dishevelled here than in reality and the path certainly does not exist, but hey, its a painting not a photo.

I have painted and sketched it en Plein air with little success, but here in this 8" x 10" I have finally scratched that itch. There's some narrative as the dried flowers on one of the graves attest to provide something a little bit extra.

The Ruined Church - Bishop Thornton 10" x 8" Oil on Board

Stroll through Fountains

Oil on Board 12" x 6": Painted from sketches and photos in the studio from an afternoon stroll at Fountains Abbey. Probably one of the best preserved ruined (oxymoron?) monasteries in Northern England. Some beautiful light finally emerged from behind the clouds illuminating the western side of the church tower enthused me to scribble down a quick sketch, and snapshot on a phone camera - so pretty useless as a photo but great as an aide memoir. The two people which add a little life to the scene and aid the composition were chucked in from some other sketches from elsewhere in the abbey.

Oil on Board 12" x 6"

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

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/