Another view of the local beach at Formby, quickly done, with it’s wide expanses of sand and retreating sand dunes. It recalls summer days by the seaside and time squandered in the warm sunshine.
Summer’s on its way, though we may have to wait a while longer.
Other seaside and beach paintings are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
It’s probably a familiar scene if you are a regular to this site. Based on my other paintings of this street I was commissioned to do a painting featuring this particular building ( the one with the blue tiling on the right). I was asked to do it in the style of my earlier paintings.
I did point out that I had already done this view in a recent painting I posted in December, which you might remember, below.
The lady explained that she wanted more detail of the building and definitely didn’t like the traffic. Here was a useful insight. This aversion to traffic makes me realise that some people do not share my world view on this, and probably many other subjects.
It made me think that perhaps I should do more pavement views – even though I feel the road and it’s busyness makes the painting more interesting, as well as giving a more expansive field of view.
Still, the customer is always right and here is the result. It arrived on her doorstep yesterday.
Other scenes of Lord Street are to be found on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
With a commission and a demonstration and getting ready for my holiday I’ve been busy of late, but still found time to play around with some small watercolour abstracts.
They are all based on landscape and light.
Though none of them have been completely to my satisfaction, there are some nice parts which could be developed.
I do find with watercolour that creating interest with texture is a little more difficult than with oils or acrylics and have been busy spraying, scraping and dragging to try and vary my applications.
So here are a few of my experiments. I think I will pause for now, as I find you can quite easily go into auto repeat.
I have put them in my sketchbook and will look at them later to see where I could take them.
Other abstracts are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
Yesterday I did a watercolour demonstration on a canal scene for a painting group. I wanted to have a few canal scenes to take along to the demo and I painted this the other day to fill out the display. It’s a subject I’ve tackled before with the spring leaves just coming out on the trees in front of the old windmill in Parbold – it houses the gallery of a local artist, James Bartholomew, who’s won awards for seascapes, but now seems to do a lot of animals.
At the time I did a painting on the spot, but when I finished, I walked along the moored narrowboats and saw these guys in conversation on a boat further down the line. When I came to do a painting in the studio they got promoted to the front of the queue.
I’m still not sure about this, as the opening leaves against the dark background is difficult to get in watercolour, but I think I’ve progressed it from the last time I painted it.
Other canal scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I am in the middle of a few incomplete projects at the moment, so here is another acrylic painting. It is a return to an old subject, with an old painting – the view from Clieves’ Hills. I did it in 2012, before I started blogging. It looks from the low hill across a summery view of Halsall and the Moss, towards the coast and Southport where I live.
I like the richness of colour in the foreground that helps create the aerial perspective which is driven further with the smokey blue background. Somebody else obviously liked this and purchased it.
I still like this area for sources of subjects and hopefully will be heading out there again when the weather gets warmer.
Other landscapes – and paintings from Clieves’ Hills – are still available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I managed to sell a few paintings at an exhibition I held at my framers after Christmas. All of them were beach scenes. So, I just completed another view of the Formby beach from my visit last summer.
I like the remnants of the fences that stand forlornly in the shifting sands. I often wonder what purpose they served as they pop up in all sorts of strange places.
Other beach scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
Saturday saw a now rare opportunity for me to do some life painting and drawing. This study above was done in acrylic. I decided to roughly paint areas of light and shade before I did any drawing and I was pleased with the energy this created in the final piece.
I did this second one in a similar way, but I felt it lacked something of the first study.
Perhaps it was the stiffer pose and the lighting not being as effective. At this point of the session, the guy running the show decided to have two models posing together. I decided to focus on just the female model because the male model was even more rigid as the quick sketch below left shows.
So, it was good to get at least one satisfying painting from the day, especially as I hadnt attended a life session since December. I must make more of an effort, but the thought of standing, cramped in a room with a whole bunch of artists for two or three hours is still unappealing – especially as I want to go on holiday in a few weeks time.
Other life paintings can be found on my website: grahammcquadefineart,com
I’m continuing my imaginary travels, but this renegade slipped out: I hankered after some brash colour; that’s my excuse.
To curb these impulses, and get back to the theme outlined in my earlier blog, about our reactions to unfamiliar and new places, I added dashes of green and, naturally, called it Green Spaces. Tenuous; agreed, but look at the COLOUR.
So on the green theme, this one slipped out by accident. I imagined forests; greened light piercing the dark and glimpses of sky.
By slipping out I mean this is a repurposed old painting. The above started out as a pastoral scene I posted in a 2019 blog.
I brushed and scraped some colours over this painting, mainly to obscure the figures and hide any of the representational and left it overnight. I came back the next morning to start on it, turned it about and decided it didnt need much extra doing to it: so I didnt.
Finally, back to my imagined travel theme. I did this, Strange Town, deliberately and conscientiously following my self imposed brief.
But I must admit I prefer the first two.
Other abstracts are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I’ve been exploring abstracts derived from the landscape and showed some of these in previous posts. As a first stage in the production of these abstracts, I have been sketching out loose landscapes to see if they might lead me somewhere down this path. Here are a couple I was pleased with. The one above came from a clip I saw on the TV and I did a quick, loose, watercolour sketch from memory. There isnt much to it, but it gave a pleasing result.
The one above is based on the beach at Southport, where I live, and I have used the idea of this in one of the semi abstracts I showed in my last post. Initially, I was actually messing around with a skyscape and added the sand and sea as an afterthought. I like the way the rivulets form on the beach, though it can result on getting your feet wet as you walk along the beach, especially when the tide is coming in.
Other landscapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
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