Continuing with images from my cycle ride the other morning. This is again done in three colours UM blue, Cad red and yellow, but the red is subdued to give a tighter chromatic range. I love the counter changes of light and shadow.
Other landscape paintings are available on my website grahammcquadefineart.com
Another from my early morning ramblings. It was around here later that my tyre got punctured and I was faced with a 3 mile walk home when I found out that my repair outfit wasn’t complete and I didn’t have a spare tube. I suppose that’s what can happens on your first outing of the year. I think I’m more organised now – even had the bike serviced.
Other landscapes can be found on my website for sale: grahammcquadefineart.com
Another painting from my early morning cycle ride down towards Liverpool. The textural work in the foregrounds makes it a bit more satisfying than my previous painting of the Alt, last week. I might redo that one and include more foreground foliage there. Looking at this as I write I need to add some shadowy ripples to the left hand side of the ditch to give it some texture and link it to the bank. It seems that there’s always something else that needs doing.
Other local landscapes of Southport and beyond are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
A bit of fun with a photo I took whilst having lunch in Venice and two guys sidled in to play some jazz. My idea of heaven, food, wine, sunshine and jazz. Perhaps this was how I saw them at the end of the session.
Other paintings available or sale on my website grahammcquadefineart.com
The other day with the sun rising early I got on my bike and cycled along the old railway line towards Maghull and Liverpool. The morning was too cold to start painting – well for me it was – so I took my camera. On the low lying land the morning mist slowly burnt off revealing farms and woods in the distance. In my rush I didn’t take a spare inner tube and on the way back got a puncture so the last three miles was on foot – still it wasn’t raining and it could have been a ten mile walk if it had happened earlier, so you have to count your blessings and I got a few nice images. Here the Alt, a small river which ends up in the Mersey Estuary weaves around the flat farmland of the Lancashire Plain.
Other landscapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
Two recent life paintings, one done yesterday. As you can see I have just purchased another can of water miscible grey undercoat. It does give a good medium/light tone to paint on and also means I can overpaint old paintings. It has a blue tinge which I must admit I am not fully exploiting on these sketches but in these sessions of just over an hour there isn’t too much thinking time, let alone anytime – but it’s always a challenge.
I like the water-miscible undercoat as you can take some along with you and use it to correct if need be or work into the painting, as in the second one, without causing solvent smells and being able to clean your brush easily.
Other life paintings are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
Assembling the paintings for my landscape exhibition, which starts next week, I was including the painting below. It was an old painting I quite liked, but I wondered about the flat area in the middle and whether the images needed linking better. So I painted in a wind sculpted tree which spread across the centre touching the different areas.
Other landscapes are available for sale on my website.
Halfway through assembling my upcoming exhibition I thought that I would take a break and mess around with some acrylics. These are liquid acrylics and full bodied acrylics along with some fillers to give texture that doesn’t appear to be showing too well. Anyway a bit of colourful fun.
Other paintings are available on my website for sale: grahammcquadefineart.com
I felt I needed one more painting for my exhibition to complement the other mixed acrylic I did see below. So this one is the last – well for the exhibition at least.
In fact this one above is a further adaptation of the painting I originally posted which I felt was a bit garish, ( see below) but once you got those acrylics on there’s not much you can do.
So this one got gessoed over and I did the top painting on this and then repeated it in more muted colours on another canvas.
So that’s thirty one landscape paintings for the exhibition. I’m now sorting out the frames and tweaking a few of the paintings and we should be ready to go. I’m not holding out much hope on this exhibition, but this is the first time I’ve amassed this amount of paintings for one exhibition on a single topic, so it will be a good exercise if nothing else.
The exhibition is called ‘Between the Mersey and Ribble’ and is a set of paintings based on the area. The Mersey and the Ribble are two rivers which come out on the coast around here – you may have heard of one of them. It is on at the Martin Mere Wetland Centre for a month from 19th of this month.
Many of the paintings in the exhibition are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I was having a cull of my old sketch books the other day, trying to keep my old paintings and drawings down to a manageable size. I came across these drawings done, at various times, in sanguine crayon.
I must admit to enjoying working in this medium on toned paper, but I would end up doing loads of them to the exclusion of trying new things and experimenting. I find the slow construction of them meditative, yet forms are quickly built and I suppose I could use them for more detailed pieces if I had the mind to.
So perhaps I might have another go on larger sheets – these are all from 16×12 ins pads. Its good to have a look at what you have done in the past and at least I can easily get around that pile in the corner now.
Here’s to a trip free future.
Other figurative work for sale is available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
graham mcquade 