LORD STREET EVENING – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

Another view of winter sunset on our main street. I’ve not had much time for my normal painting as it’s been a busy week including setting up another pop-up exhibition in town. This was one of the paintings I hung there the day before yesterday – a view I saw around Christmas when I came out our last exhibition we held there. A similar view is hanging in the main art gallery, over the road opposite, in another exhibition, and yesterday I was told it had sold – so maybe there’s hope for this.

Today I’m manning the pop-up show which now, because of absences, seems to be our opening day. Anyway, Friday is my elected day for gallery duty.

Last night I was in Blackpool doing a watercolour demonstration of roses for a painting club there and on Tuesday I did a speed awareness course, having been caught in a speed trap earlier in the year ( which, according to my wife, was long overdue)

The perils of life in the fast lane…

Other townscapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

SEEMS TO HAVE PASSED – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

This is somewhere around where I live, but I cant recall the precise location. I liked the haphazard nature of the receding fence and decided to add a passing storm, then stirred in some resultant puddles, all to pile on some atmosphere. The emerging sun creates counterchange by casting a bit of light on the wet, reflective surfaces down the winding lane – and now the storm’s passed, you can continue on your way.

It’s the kind of weather we’ve been getting of late.

Other landscapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

THE BUS ARRIVES ON LORD STREET – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

Another in a long series of paintings of my town’s main street. There are a couple of exhibitions coming up that are held on this street, so it is useful to have something of local interest to display. Add that to the fact that I am a sucker for the winter sunsets here – a painting is inevitable. There may be another to come.

Other Lord Street paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

OTTER AND OTTER – WATERCOLOUR PAINTINGS

Our pop-up exhibition in the Wayfarer’s Arcade in Southport has started and I have manned it on two occasions. Visitor numbers on Sunday were lowish though we managed to sell four paintings, but on Friday we only had 4 visitors all day – the worst I have ever known in the eleven years we’ve been doing this – happily, we did manage to sell one painting.

So you have a lot of time to kill waiting for the crowds. I did the painting above on Friday. A rather flippant comment on climate change, though perhaps apt to feature an animal that is listed as vulnerable.

I did the second one, above, on Sunday – a view of our local pier at Southport at sunset. A view I’ve done before, but this time from a slightly different angle in order to flatten out the subject to be able to present in a squarer format.

There are planty of paintings awaiting a new home on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

SUMMER’S DAY, LORD STREET – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

Regulars may be tired of this subject, but it shows the heart of my town, Southport, and the subject is still popular at exhibitions. For me, I like the challenge of the architecture and the figures. On this one I battled with the shop windows, as on my main source photo the windows were obscured by a figure and on the other shots, with the focus on the street, they were too dark to be meaningful. I was pleased with the outcome. Abstract marks, some on damp paper, others on dry gave the reflective qualities I was after and made a good contrast to the brightness of the street. They also feel right.

I also wanted a view without much of the traffic. For me it is a busy thoroughfare and cars are part of that, but a lady who bought a painting of the street earlier in the year, made the comment, that there was too much focus on the traffic on paintings I showed her. This comment made me think that for many, the focus is really on the buildings, pavement bustle and the shops under the arcade. So, here is my attempt at redressing the balance. Hope you like it.

Other Lord Street paintings and townscape paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

A LONG JOURNEY – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

On Saturday I received an anonymous wordpress comment on my email. I assumed it was from Troll and deleted it. Then it struck me that it had arrived in the middle of the day and Troll unleashes it’s invective at night, probably fuelled by alcohol. I decided to chance a look at the comment.

It was from a lady who had seen a copy of this painting, of one of our local parks. Posted in 2016. She asked if it was available for sale. The image she had seen was the one below which was half imperial. Since then I had cut it down to quarter imperial – the one you see above.

But the story begins much earlier. After blogging the painting, I exhibited it at my local framers. Someone quickly decided to buy it, but wanted it in another frame. Glyn, my framer, obliged, without taking a deposit. However, when I packed up the exhibition some six weeks later they hadnt returned.

In the meantime, an acquaintance, after visiting my exhibition, gushed that she would have bought the painting of Hesketh Park if it hadn’t been sold. So I contacted her and told her that the painting was now available. It became quickly apparent that what she had told me contained as much bullshit as the promise the first ‘buyer’ had given to my framer.

So the painting came back home. I told Glyn to contact me if the first punter returned, but they never did.

I then put it into other exhibitions, cut down, in an attempt to sharpen it up. To no avail. I even removed it from my website. So when I received this enquiry I had a bit of a frantic search trying to locate it. Fortunately I still had it, but at first I didnt realise the painting the lady was looking at was the old one.

Anyway, all’s well. The lady should receive the painting today. It is a present for her son, to remind him of the days when they visited the park.

Sometimes it pays not to throw things away.

Other local paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

CRESCENT ROAD, BIRKDALE – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

Most mornings I cross Crescent Road and see this view. It is close to where I live and on a sunny morning the glow of the red bricks complementing the verdant hedges and other foliage as well as the patterns of light and shade always captures my attention. So I thought I would paint it and add it to my small collection of local paintings. And here it is for you, a small snapshot of where I live.

Other local paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

EVENING ON BIRKDALE DUNES – PASTEL PAINTING

You may recall in the post before last the gloomy vista of rain clouds about to come over Birkdale beach – and I said it was part of a series, so here is the next one, a contrasting evening on the beach, with the sun hanging low and the light shimmering off the wet sands in the distance. I did this type of evening view in watercolour and it sold a year or two back, so I thought that I would try a version in pastels, placing tonal washes down in gouache first and then working over them in pastel as I had in my earlier pastel.

Mystery encroaches at this hour. The low light casts shadows and darkens ravines between marram covered dunes. Tracks of past beachgoers get highlighted by a glow on the raised edges that is then underscored by the shadow of the depression. Wisps of grass, catch the low sun and seem to glow against shadowed inclines. Soon the mystery will be complete.

Other beach scenes are available on my website for sale: grahammcquadefineart.com

A STORM BREAKS OVER BIRKDALE BEACH – PASTEL PAINTING

I am working on a small series of local beach scenes in pastel. It gives me an opportunity to try out the use of gouache to quickly block in masses of light and shade. Darker passages can take a lot of pastel to build up and painting in a mixture of colours that can be added to with pastel seems to give a fresher result. I have done it with acrylic before, but I felt gouache will retain a better tooth to the paper.

On the beach, the marram grass covered dunes give way to lonely wet sands stretching way out to the breaking waves, almost imperceptible, in the distance. Above, dark clouds gather across the Irish sea in readiness to sweep in eastwards, lashing the country with the moisture picked up when crossing the Atlantic.

It is a good place to walk, in waterproof boots, on a windswept days past wading birds, to view what flotsam the preceding tide has deposited on the wet sand. Broken branches, like reaching limbs, festooned with flags of algae and black jewels of coal scoured from the Welsh coast dot the sand like pebbles.

Other seascapes and beach scenes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

SUNSET ON LORD STREET – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

A view I’ve done before, but this time I thought I would make more of the sunset and it’s effects. I’ve used the woman crossing the road with her shopping bags in another painting, but she fits in well here.

I think I’ve mentioned before, in earlier blogs, how the sunset in winter months is quite spectacular on Lord Street, the main street in Southport, where I live. I also spotted the light reflecting off the surface of a puddle in the gutter and, if nothing else, that was reason enough for me to do a painting.

Other townscapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com