This is Lesley’s mini. It’s waiting to be collected by it’s new owner.
If I recognise the licence plate of a car belonging to someone I know,
it’s their car, not just any car of that colour and model. It’s as if the
vehicle is the person. So it can be a little weird when the person has
passed away but their car is still sitting there. If I ever see it again
after it’s gone, It’ll still be Lesley’s mini.

I also made a straightforward pencil drawing of the rear plate,
and I’ve included it here as an antidote to the above sentiment.
Back to lines, tones and form…

LN52 KVA pencil study, August 2012

A winter scene
I stand on the bridge buffeted by the gusting wind, attracted by the serpentine line
the road takes as it curves towards me and sweeps underneath, the traffic roars
past this way and that adding to the sense of impatience, of noisy urgency.
I produced a quick charcoal sketch to get the important elements down on paper
quickly, something to work on indoors later and besides, it was pretty awkward
and uncomfortable up on the bridge!

I’ve produced a version of this scene using ink with some wax resist and scratching through here and there making a brooding, moody landscape reminiscent of many a dark winter’s afternoon.

Another drawing on the ongoing M25 project
One very wet trip recently had spray from heavy trucks and vans billowing up and whipping around the backs and off the tops of the vehicles furiously, reducing the visibility but creating a wild, surreal experience.
Back indoors I made a couple of pencil notes from memory before producing a study
in black Indian ink. I first masked off the highlight areas before dampening the paper with clean water. Using a large brush just a few strokes were placed and allowed to
flow quite freely, controlling it with some tissue now and again and restating a
few marks when semi-dry and blotting out other shapes to suggest vehicle bodies.
The headlights were masked off and then revealed when the ink was dry, retouching a little here and there. I was careful not to overwork the drawing so that the original experience would hopefully come across when finished, as it did as I was working on it…

Going out late on a winter’s afternoon, ready to paint a sky with a little drama to it usually means having some sort of plan beforehand, so that no time is wasted driving around looking for something that attracts me and as little time as possible wasted pacing up and down, studying the view from all angles before committing myself!

This view was painted from the edge of a small copse overlooking a farm. Looking towards the West the lavender grey and butter yellow distant clouds were framed nicely by the haystack and the small cottage. In conditions such as these, the picture can be split into two or three tonal blocks i.e. sky, background, foreground. I find this helps a great deal in simplifying the painting process, keeping distracting detail to the bare minimum and helping to make a strong composition. Or that’s the way it should work.

In this instance, I was enjoying the moment far too much for the good of the picture and started fiddling with foreground leaves, twigs and undergrowth. Hardly any of it was essential for the overall mood I was trying to convey, but I simply got carried away.

Lesson learned for next time, then.

Wetlands are one of the few remaining places in the UK where you can still feel a sense of wilderness. Some are managed for the benefit of wildlife, such as Old Hall Marshes in Essex. Each winter flocks of brent geese graze on the meadows, waders probe the mud and skulk in the water margins, and marsh harriers and peregrines hunt the open spaces.

In the autumn of 2007 I was walking back to the car towards dusk, below the sea wall sheltering from the wind. I was aware of a whooshing and flapping sound, then another and another, like a fleet of paper jet fighters flying past my ears just missing my head.
I wasn’t wrong, really. I stopped to see what was happening and quickly realised that large numbers of swallows and martins were flying down into the reed bed to my left, perching up two or three birds to a stem, bending them over, chattering quietly.

This delightful discovery was new to me, and I wondered if the coming migration back to Africa was partly the reason for the large mixed gathering or whether it happens during the summer also. This safety in numbers is possibly a subject for a new painting, similar to the “owl over the A13” project.

A couple of years earlier I made a coloured conte drawing in the studio of a water filled ditch below the sea wall. When you approach secret places such as this you never know what rare bird or animal may come briefly into view, before your clumsy presence disturbs, and it hides in the undergrowth, dives into the water or flies away.

These places are tiny strips of wilderness in an otherwise managed environment.

Old Hall Marshes, conte on paper 2003. Always the chance of seeing a fleeting glimpse of a rare bird or animal, before your presence is feltRecently I took oils and a canvas to a spot where the raised sea wall turns at right angles around the estuary and set up preparing to produce a quick painting at dusk, hopefully with some golden glow in the West setting off the reed heads and twiggy growth in silhouette against the evening sky. I couldn’t find the right viewpoint so aware time was short, I turned away to the East and focused my attention on another ditch similar to the drawing I had made years previously. The bushes seemed to frame the reeds and water quite nicely although it was getting dark rapidly. Three birdwatchers passed by with their tripods and telescopes walking along the sea wall until they seemed to melt into the dusk in front of the town lights, now twinkling in the distance on the far side of the estuary.

I decide to finish as it’s just too dark to mix any paint, and I rely on what I know I’ve mixed on the palette to make a few finishing dabs of light, and scratch through with a palette knife here and there for lighter twigs and grass stems. This is where habitually setting out your paints in the same place and in the same order helps, so you know where each colour is in situations like this!  I made a scan of this canvas using photoshop to  desaturate and darken it slightly, and enhance the effect of the lights from the town.

The result gives a better impression of the light levels at the time, but would have been quite a challenge to render on site.

It was a long walk back to the car, with all my gear over my shoulder in a holdall and carrying a wet canvas in one hand, along the top of the sea wall, the wet mud of the estuary just catching the remaining light.