Category Archives: paintings

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there

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image showing three plein air sketches, 6x8

three small plein air paintings used to create a larger work

And as Joseph Campbell said: “If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”

Last year I made these three small paintings while I was out on the hill and I’ve been struggling ever since to find a way to make them into a large painting. So far, this is what I’ve come up with but I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m not even sure if I quite like the result. All I know is that I nearly like it, so that will have to be enough for now. I think those clouds are going to be adjusted one last time before I can finally put this experiment to one side.

photo of large landscape oil painting, work in progress

large oil painting, not quite finished, created using smaller sketches

Another experiment has involved trying to make a large painting out of a tiny little pencil sketch and a hazy memory of a place I can’t quite even be sure exists (although I was definitely somewhere when I drew that sketch). In a previous post I showed the A1 charcoal drawing I’d made from the sketch and now I’ve started making an A2 painting, very murky and dark to try and convey just how rainy it was that day. Again. I’ve no idea where this is going but it’s something I feel compelled to try.

photo of unfinished oil painting depicting rainy landscape

murky work in progress of rainy day painting, A2, oil on canvas

Back in the slightly more real world two of my paintings are preparing to leave for new homes. I’ll miss the coffee pot, which probably sounds crazy, but some paintings you just get attached to.

photo of two small paintings

two paintings ready to go to their new homes

Where is this place?

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Bowland landscape plein air drawing in pencil, A5

plein air pencil sketch, A5, drawn somewhere in the Bowland landscape, perhaps around Whitewell?

A place I went for a walk in about 15 or so years ago has turned into a mystical landscape somewhere in the back of my brain. I can see it now in my mind’s eye; it’s very green, cloudy and peaceful with nothing but hills and trees and it’s very damp, because it has been raining for a long time. In spite of being wet it is a beautiful place with rounded hills sweeping up and away and revealing further rises behind, which could be reached if you were to walk on, through a valley opening and beyond. It’s a very secret, mysterious place shrouded in mist. I know I made sketches of the landscape when I was there and I think I know which ones they are in my tiny sketchbook, but I can’t be completely sure.

The drawing above is the one I’m most sure of. There is also another one, obviously sketched in no time at all (maybe we were getting cold) that seems to be of the same place.

pencil drawing created in the Bowland hills

quick plein air pencil sketch in unknown Bowland landscape, A5

A subsequent watercolour sketch went a bit strange.

watercolour on Arches paper of landscape in wild colours

wild colours watercolour, 8 inches square on Arches paper

So I tried again, trying to keep the colours and shapes a bit more true, but it lacks the spirit of the place.

small watercolour painting of a Bowland landscape

somewhere in Bowland … a small watercolour painting

Finally I made the first sketch into a huge charcoal drawing as preparation for a possible painting.

A1 charcoal drawing of a Bowland landscape

charcoal drawing created from small pencil sketch of Bowland, A1 paper

When I walked in the real place I was on a camping trip with Andi, who was ill. My planned route turned out to be 14 miles in all: seven there and seven back. We did stop at an inn in the middle of nowhere at the halfway point but Andi was extremely stoical to tramp all that way through wet fields. I seem to remember him collapsing with a grateful sigh when we got back to the tent and not really moving until the next day. It might be interesting to go back one day but maybe not – you can never really go back. It might be better to reimagine.