Feb Light, Langcliffe Scar

After dropping my youngest at school the other morning, before the Beast from the East hit these shores, this view of Langcliffe Scar stood out as the morning rays were just hitting the cliff face. It is amazing how inspiration can hit you full on, even just a passing glimpse enthused me to rush back home, grab a sketchbook and pencils and return to the scene. Although the light had changed a little I sketched the scene rapidly adding notes as I had done pre-digital camera era with a view to painting this as I has seen it and not how the camera sees it. In this I failed miserably as the temptation of taking a couple of snaps on the phone camera was too great. This painting was the result, although not slavishly copying a photo, the distortion of the photo and the saturation of the green does show up, especially in the bottom quarter of the painting.

Feb Light, Langcliffe Scar. Oil on Canvas Board 10" x 14"

I read recently that using a photo on a backlit monitor is counterproductive as false light shows up, and I am wanting to get away from this, I guess this is my first big step in moving away from basing paintings on photos and going back to using sketches as my primary reference for completed paintings. Although I am happy with the sky and the tones, I am not too pleased with the over-saturated greens of the foreground and middle-distance, and just exemplifies what a thug green can be, even my sparing use of Oxide of Chromium permeates the lower quarter of the painting, even though only the tiniest drop was applied on the palette. For this over saturation, I blame the camera, and not my mixing! 

Inglebro

The massif of Ingleborough is probably the most recognisable hill in the Yorkshire Dales, visible and recognisable from as far away as Leeds and Morecambe - its flat gritstone cap was supposedly the site of an ancient hillfort dating back to the times of the Roman invasion, and an outpost of the Brigantian leader Venutius who rebelled against not only the might of Rome, but rose up against his wife - the pro Roman Cartimandua. The hill has been also linked with some drunken vandalism, when the circular hospice was partly demolished by inebriated revellers on the day of opening in 1830.

I painted this en plein-air during the first few days of February with a rather minimalist setup, hoping to get the painting done rapidly before frostbite set in. In the end having produced what Alwyn Crawshaw would describe as a "atmosphere sketch" I gave up and resorted to fine tuning the sketch back in the warmth of the studio. When I say 'touching up' I really mean 'completely re-jigging the sky' as the originally-painted mackerel sky was a hard-one to pull off.

Inglebro, Oil on Panel 10" x 6"

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"

Hogget House, Gooseker

There is an ubiquitous view of the dale from the other side of this small barn which has appeared in countless calendars typifying the Limestone scenery hereabouts; I however have chosen the alternative view - looking up Goat Scar Lane (locally known as Gooseker) maybe one day I will paint ‘The View’ but this is not the day. Gooseker was once part of an important thoroughfare, now bypassed, which probably linked Stainforth to Grassington, connecting with the ancient Mastiles Lane on Malham Moor.

Ubiquitous view of the Hogg House

Hogg House, Gooseker: Oil on Board 8" x 6"

The small laithe or barn could have been a Hogget house, hence the title of the piece, a Hogget is a sheep who has been left out on the fells over winter, generally between one and two years of age and this structure possibly provided shelter for them on the long cold winters. It doesn’t have a name, although the OS calls it unromantically ‘sheepfold’, but it has been sketched, photographed and painted so many times that a name is warranted, hence my title. The image was painted after a Sunday morning stroll up to Catrigg Foss and beyond, just as the snow came down and covered the track, the flash of red from the rucksack provides the tiniest splash of colour on what was a very muted, almost monochrome day.

Batty Moss

The Ribblehead Viaduct or more correctly Batty Moss Viaduct, built in the last phase of the great railway building period in the 1870’s. It doesn't take me to say what an impressive structure it is and how lucky we are to have it on our doorstep. I painted this from sketches and photos I made while having an amble around the platforms and lumps and bumps of the remains of the shanty town that for a while turned this remote location into the most populous ‘city’ in Ribblesdale. Around this viaduct there is a lovely little (2.5miles) walk which is not too taxing, and takes in the views of this landmark from all aspects, including two farms of which Winterscales will be the subject of a further painting as this hamlet is too pretty not to miss. 

Cold and Frosty January Morning

I have got to admit though this painting was a bit of a struggle, ideally the aim was to capture the light and shadows of the viaduct over the undulating sedges of Batty Moss, together with spoil heap from railway construction to the right of the painting, but no matter how much I refined it, the painting just didn’t work. so despite a couple of days ‘dabbling’ at it to no purpose - refining the foreground grasses and playing more and more with the shadows - it still wasn’t working, an element was missing. I needed life and focus and then it hit me, but not literally - so I resorted to the old dales adage, “if in doubt - chuck in a sheep or two”, or three and within minutes the painting was transformed from a fairly cold lifeless daub to a fairly cold daub with life.

Batty Moss, Oil on Canvas Panel: 16" x 12"

Disappointment

Following a 7 mile walk in the drizzle of the southern Pennines, what could be more welcoming than a pint, a bowl of soup and a nice roaring fire? The title is the feeling you get when you find that the target of your quest is shut, and only open in the evening! The pub is the Packhorse Inn on the Widdop-Heptonstall road, and on trip advisor it has excellent reviews although I wished I had read them more clearly as it does state that it's shut at lunchtime! Schoolboy mistake - Next time I plan a walk I will double check the opening times of hostelries...

Disappointment - Oil on Board 10" x 8"

Again there are parallels to one of my all-time favourite artists, Peter Brook, and again although I am not trying to emulate him, unfortunately the landscapes of the south Pennines have his mark all over them and it is difficult to avoid the similarities. A friend of mine told me recently that I do dreary and bleak really well, so onward and upward, I just hope it doesn't reflect my demeanour.

Chaos on the B6479

A combination of snow and sheep bring Upper Ribblesdale to a standstill. These are Salt Lake cottages, some railway houses on the Gauber Road, the B6479 near Ribblehead. I know its a bit of tongue-in-cheek embellishing the news reports of how Britain comes to a standstill the moment a little bit of snow falls, which I have emphasised by the use of a caption (not to everyone's taste). While painting this I was reminded of watching BBC's Breakfast time last winter and the producer had an outside reporter standing at a crossroads in some suburb reporting about a heavy snowfall which hadn't really happened. The poor chap was desperately finding something newsworthy about the pityful amount of snow that had fallen; so much so that the cameraman had focussed on a word that was written in what was left of the snow - the viewer could just make out the word 'help'  on the grass - no doubt scribed by the reporter himself.

Chaos on the B6479 - Oil on Board 17 1/2" x 12"

I honestly am trying to avoid the parallels with Peter Brook, however its very difficult to get a non-Brookish look to a painting of the Pennines in Winter without echoes of his skill; so here I embraced it yet again and added the title, which I think in this case adds another element to this painting. The use of a raw umber ground also helps here in bringing the various tones out. The good thing about these winter scenes is it forces the use of a very limited pallette, and focus more on the tones, the red of the sign returns it from the monochrome.