I've decided to do another month of Doodlewash challenges. Not sure what inspired me but I do like daily painting. Todays image is of my new character the Bloops. These little guys will get into to all sorts of mischief. This is the prompt - Reflection.
Happy New Year everyone. I have decided to start the year by publishing 3 video tutorials using my watercolour technique. It's a fairly simple 4 step process.
1) drawing
2) initial wash
3) add dark tones
4) details
The equipment I use is simple, a matchstick pen similar to the one Edward Wesson would have used, A large mop brush and a limited watercolour colour palette consisting of warm and cool colours - windsor yellow, quinacridone gold, colbolt blue, ultramarine blue, burnt Sienna and permanent rose.
All the details are in the video.
If you enjoyed the video please subscribe to my Youtube channel and give me a like.
This is a video I recorded a while back before I started using a high definition camera. Please excuse the quality. Let me know what you think.
Seeing through on a promise to Samuel I brought him a toy for being good. Debs was in the toilet and I was guarding the handbag and stuff. The whistling toy was just inside the shop and I gave Samuel the money to buy it himself. I could just about see the shop counter and he managed brilliantly.
On the beach the whistling toy worked great, but it was a really hot day and we kept dipping our feet in the sea to cool dow
Debs drank coke leaning against the rocks.
Coppet beach location sketches
Walking from Wisemans bay to Saundersfoot is hungry work. We stopped daily at the little Ed ice cream van and sat to watch the tide. It wa a handy half way stop to the heritage park where we were staying.
The pathway itself is the old narrow gauge railway that took coal from hertiage park to the harbour at Saundersfoot. I imagine the pathway has been made wider with the sea defence, but the two tunnels that you pass through on the way are 100 per cent original. Apart from the LEDs in the path.
Location sketch of Wisemans bay.
It was a windy day when we stopped on the south Tenby beach in front of the harbour. The tide was coming in and the jelly fish were collecting on the sand.
It turns out I'm not great with heights and when three young lads stated to climb the rock on the beach I became queezy. The fact they were wearing crocs didn't help. Who wears crocs to climb? Bear feet would propbably be better.
Fortunately they made it to the top and down again without any incident. I'm thinking of buying some crocs to see if they help my fear of heights.
The town of Tenby is split into a north and south beach. The yellow sands stretch a far a the eye can see almost drawled by the towering cliffs that the town sits on. Even the holiday brochures highlight the magnificent beaches.
It was with high expectations that we took our locally made pasties to that wonderful beach. Which seemed everso slighlty over crowded. It was high tide at Tenby and the beach had all but disappeared. We found a very small place to sit and eat lunch as the hundred odd steps back to the top of the cliffs seemed like an incredibly long journey.
A sketch of the steps that I did after lunch, listening to two medical students discussing their morning...
There is nothing like fish and chip when you are on holiday. Saudersfoot has 2 marvellous establishments and we found ourselves waiting forever in the main one on the harbour front. This led to some serious people watching.
The main person serving had the biggest glasses that I have ever seen, and I lived through the eighties. Along with this she has an eye watering squint and the ability to see into next week. I lost my train of thought several times as I tried to stare into her eyes and realised I was having to look through my ear.
The old woman serving in the back ground was mainly holding boxes while a shirted man shovelled chips in rapid fire. It was a well oiled machine with orders flying into the restaurant and to the take away point. Pity then that our order had been forgotten and we sat and waited for theee quarters of an hour.
I'm sure this was revenge by the squinty-eye girl who found my staring quite obnoxious.
Wet Wales, that was what I was told to expect. We packed warm clothes and summer outfit. I the end we spent the week in t-shirts and shorts. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Our plans to explore the green countryside vanished as we spent the week walking along the old tramway coastal path from Wisemans Bridge to Saundersfoot.
The most spectacular part of the journey was a walk through two man made tunnels carved through the cliffs. It was dark and damp but the temperature was wonderfully low and a great escape from the scorching hot summer sun.
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| Paper planes sketch |
Oscar and his little brother were frequent visitors to our cabin.
To stop them reengineering Sam's Lego and because we had started origami in the evening - I made three paper planes for racing across the room. I mean where is the danger?
Chaos quickly ensued as the first plane landed in the lampshade. The competition soon changed to who could land the plane in the lampshade.
Swiftly followed by, 'oops my plane has landed in the washing up bowl...and it now flies like a brick.
Being lost for words is not something of which I suffer, but while Debs was off buying ice cream - lost for words was how I was...
Walking up the beach at first I thought 'how very daring a young woman deciding to brave the elements and throw caution to the wind, perhaps a bit of skinny dipping.
Sadly the closer the woman got, and the more curious I got , the truth became more scary.
The woman who had looked young, became old. The caution to the wind became a rather small pair of flesh toned polka dot bikini bottoms. Swiftly followed by the heavey pounding of gigantic chubby legs.
However she seemed happy.
Nothing amuses me more, (well other than people falling off of water skies), than watching people using metal detectors on the beach. Pecking around like chickens searching for feed, finding only bear cans and metal buttons.
The National Geographic website can only be blamed for encouraging these people, follow this link to see the most unusual finds including a model T ford – I Bet the AA even managed to restart it, after they emptied the carburettor of sand.
Skip was a little white Westie that I saw on our epic walk from Sandbanks to Bournemouth – and back again.
I used a sketch of a life buoy and rocks to add some drama to the scene.
His actual owners were not far off behind him but like most dogs he had run off ahead. At the sound of the crashing waves he would look back to check he was still being followed.
I had a black Heinz 57 dog that had a similar disposition. She never treated the fences of our back garden as a deterrent against escape. In the first year that we had her we received a constant flow of phone calls from neighbouring roads where she had escaped over our back fence. She also managed to turn on the gas in the kitchen one time but that’s another story.
We also had a Yorkshire Terrier that disappeared on Brean Sands in Somerset in search of some liberated Fish and Chips.
I guess we have a history of badly behaved dogs!
But with our Stiff upper lips we carried on regardless, taking shelter where possible. And during one period of sheltering I saw Diane who was sat on a bench, holding a see-through umbrella – eating ice cream.
How very British.
A groynes is a sea defence - Wood sunk in the ground to ward off the approaching tide from stealing the sand.
I’m not sure what word Diane saw.
In 2010 Debs and I had a baby boy and desperate for a holiday we managed to blag a stay at my uncles flat in Sandbanks.
Samuel was only 6 months old and couldn’t sit up on his own. We took him on the train to Swanage and foolishly we walked from Sandbanks to Bournemouth and back again. It didn’t look far on the map but as it turns out it was a long way.
Samuel slept most of the way to Bournemouth and I was able to dabble in my past time of urban sketching and people watching. On the way back Samuel woke up and I remember carrying him most of the way back as he wouldn’t settle in the pram.
The following posts are the imagined stories of the people that I sketched/watched on the day.
Below are the initial sketches…
I attended a workshop with Roger Dellar on Saturday I found an interior subject by looking through my sketch books. The image I choose was of a pre-fab building at the Chiltern Open Air museum. I had already worked out the details in the sketch and produced a colour sketch, this is the way I was taught at school. I find this approach easier than using a reference photo that I have never seen before.
The workshop was to be in oils but my water based oils, which I have never used, felt a bit dry and the linseed oil medium had turned to a solid lump. Roger uses only white spirit and linseed oil with both water based and traditional oils. For the workshop I worked in acrylic.
Roger started the workshop by demonstrating his way of working establishing a dark abstract design that he checked by moving his canvas round and checking from all angles for interesting shapes. He checked the perspective of lines and looked for ways to move the viewers eye round his picture. He then moved on to apply grey colours which he mixed by using the colour he wanted plus a complimentary colour to grey it.
I started my picture well and I managed to create my abstract design before I came a little unstuck. I prefer to work from black and white images with no colour reference So I found it hard to mix greys. I took a break from my work and made everyone a drink. While I was standing in the kitchen I had a good view of my work and I found a way to continue, plus Roger also helped by reminding me that I would need to add some green to the image to bring the view from the window into the picture.
Once the grey stage was complete the painting became easier to complete and after watching a bit more of Rogers demo I learnt that his technique is to look for colour and shapes within the image. On close inspection of my picture you will see abstract marks of colour that when you pull back create the shapes that make up the picture.
I was impressed with the final image. I think there are areas that I could improve as I painted myself into a corner with the dark shape on the right. I added some interesting dark shapes to this to suggest movement and to help the eye round the picture. There are areas within the picture that I think I would develop more in a future oil painting.
Rumour has it that Roger will be returning to the Woodley and Earley arts group to do an open air session next year...something I am looking forward too.
Below are the sketchbook drawings.
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