Sketchbook Notes
A painting from a quick trip to Wales, “Carmarthen morning” 13 x 20 inches. Covered a lot of miles in a short space of time and travelled further west into Wales than I have before. Lucky with the weather, most of the rain fell overnight, leaving the days damp but bright.
We have had some lovely weather recently and it certainly brought people out in their droves, but away from the centre of the village, there were fewer people about. Naturally they wanted to take photos of where they had been – and of themselves – but it is sometimes the less obvious moments which serve to inspire, such as some bare trees by a gate and the pattern of shadows thrown across the road.
Snow in November – Thanks to Storm Arwen. You either love it or hate it, viewing it as either magical or a threat to life and limb. It’s certainly magical to paint, and in some ways simplifies the landscape into areas of cool blues and violets against areas of warm siennas and ochres with a few slithers of untouched paper.
Of course, the difficulty with watercolours is if the water hasn’t frozen, your fingers probably will, so if you are somewhere where you are unable to sit in a car, it might be a good idea to memorize a simple view or make a pencil sketch to work from when you reach home – alternatively you could just paint the view through the window.
Ice houses were used to store ice in the days before the invention of refrigerators. They were perhaps a status-symbol to impress one’s guests by being able to offer them ice-creams in the summer. Be that as it may, Ice houses have been around for a long time and were often built as underground chambers close to the source of winter ice. Apparently during winter the ice was carved out from the river in rather larger cubes than those we would recognize today, taken to the Ice house and packed with straw as insulation. How it worked I don’t know, but it is said the ice remained frozen for many months.
This one is to be found in woodland on the Sherborne Estate in Gloucestershire, (National Trust property), and is easy to miss on your walk around the grounds if you are not expecting it.
Sketched in Imperial Gardens behind the Town Hall in Cheltenham at the beginning of the week, while waiting for the car to be serviced. Very colourful and looking especially nice in the sunshine. The good weather is meant to stay until mid-week and then go downhill.
This is a sketch I did recently while looking around the old railway station at Toddington. There are a whole lot of things going on there and loads to paint, which I hope to do more fully one day, now I know what’s there. Unfortunately I’ve discovered it just as I am in mid preparation for the new term. What I hope to do is to turn this into a larger painting and write more about the location, but it will be a few weeks before I get around to doing it! Just another thing to put on my ‘Places I must paint’ list.
It’s looking as if we will be able to hold face to face classes again from next week (for how long remains to be seen). So been busy preparing for the new term which seems to be strange and exciting at the same time.
This barn across the field at Sherborne makes use of a limited palette of Quinacridone Gold, Light Red and Cobalt Blue, trying to keep the colours muted under the grey skies we’ve been having for quite a time now.
In the middle of the countryside, surrounded by nothing but fields, some with crops, others with cattle. Little noise except the buzzing of insects, (and sometimes the buzzing of far-off chain saws), and every so often a lonely barn, not much used now, since the farming community use machines built for giants. The barns are still an integral part of the landscape and one of my favourite subject matter.
Well, it was fun while it lasted. To be in the heart of the countryside in Summer, deep in the meadows under a sun which has ripened corn and nourished life and inspired painters and poets for countless ages, is a privilege. This peaceful place with it’s rolled bales of hay, the sound of blackbirds in the hedges which border the fields, the iridescent blue of dragonflies flittering from place to place, even the persistent dive-bombing of blood-sucking insects have been the very essence of Summer for hundreds of years.
It is the place which nourishes my soul, which gives the luxury of time to enjoy solitude, to banish for a while the demands of modern life which causes needless stress. The chance to recharge batteries and to understand what is important in life and to hold on to it. To reaffirm one’s beliefs and reconnect to the central theme which keeps us all going.
Everyone needs a special place, and for each person it will be different. For me it is this spot which fulfills me. But even as I finish this painting, I hear the tractor and trailer, which will scoop up the bales and remove them, approaching. The gentle breeze of the past few days is working itself up into something stronger, presaging a change in the weather. Next week will be different, but I know my special place will be there again one day, and I will be drawn to it, to be nourished again, as I always am.
Painted on Saunders Waterford watercolour block.
Same subject matter, different location. This time in the meadows near my home. Fields of them, and nobody looking as if they are thinking about moving them soon. So while everyone was sitting sensibly indoors, I perched in the shade of a bale and breathed in the sweet scent of freshly cut grasses and wild flowers while painting today’s sketch. The only down side was when I became aware of an itch in the hand holding my palette and discovered a not-very-nice-looking creature happily sucking my blood. I flapped it away, but some hours later I can still see the puncture mark it made.
This is another entry in my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook.
Graham Findlay Watercolours 