I decided to return to watercolours and build up some canal paintings. This was a contra jour scene I spotted recently. I loved the weeds and rushes at the canal edge in the foreground. I decided to add a narrowboat, mainly to upset troll. Then, dropping some white gouache onto the wet paper gives the satisfying illusion of smoke. I’m easily pleased.
Other canal scenes are available for sale on my revamped website: grahammcquadefineart.com
More paintings for the exhibition. I thought one of the canal might be worth a punt, so I need to chose between these two.
Though I may do a series of canal scenes for later in the year so I could always use the one left over, but – and here’s the good news – I will need a few more to make up a series. That’ll cheer the troll up if nothing else.
Other canal scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I wanted to continue with my local paintings but had nothing ready and being out of sorts with a persistent cough, I thought I’d take a break, have an easy time, and try this scene. I find these vertical extended paintings sell well. Perhaps they fill awkward spaces and this view, with a bit of juggling, seemed to fit a long format well. It also helps me in adding to the selection of canal scenes I am also working on for an exhibition later in the year. I liked the different layers of interest in this with the background landscape, the canal and narrowboats and then the dogwalker – who came in from another couple of photos.
Other canal scenes and landscapes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com or grahammcquadefineart.co.uk
These sketches of the Leeds Liverpool Canal were done a few days ago as the weather has now taken a turn for the worse, or returned to the norm, depending on your level of pessimism.
The sketches are of each side of the bridge, by the Ship Inn at Haskayne, although on the first one the bridge is just out of view on the left. It was when I was well into this second sketch that I realised something was missing. Here is a painting of the same site which I sold a few years ago.
Admittedly the second one was painted in the evening light whilst my top sketch is done in the morning, but I must say that the willow and the ivy on the bridge do add some character and interest to the image, not quite balanced by the reeds now growing on the canal bank.
Other canal scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
One morning, a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting on the canal edge painting when this entourage drifted by. They came up from behind me and I had to drop the painting, brushes and palette and scramble around in my bag for the camera, all without upsetting the group. I crept along the bank taking a number of shots from which
I compiled this painting.
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Well, we have been suffering a few days of good weather around here, so I have been getting up early and getting down to the Leeds to Liverpool Canal to do some early morning painting. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, this is a project I am doing on views of the canal – so this is the fact-finding part,
In earlier days I took my bike and combined painting with some exercise, but for a variety of reasons I have taken the car and gone directly to a particular stretch of the canal.
As it has been at a more leisurely pace I have taken a flask of tea with me. At the time of getting up – around 5-30, by the time I get to a suitable site and sit on my stool, a cup of tea really helps me to focus. I am quite pleased with these sketches and the tea may have something to do with it.
I may work some of these sketches up into paintings – so you have been warned. I have also taken a number of photos as well, so I am accumulating the information,
Paintings of the canal and narrowboats are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I am working on a couple of projects at the moment. One is a set of paintings based around the Leeds Liverpool Canal which meanders across the countryside close to me. I went out the other week and posted a painting I did on the spot. This is a view of a couple of the narrowboats I posted then, but viewed from a different angle where I spotted a couple of the owners having an early morning cuppa in the sun. It seemed a good subject to start off the series.
Other canal scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
With some good weather I got off to the canal early Monday morning and sat in a deserted pub garden by the side of the canal and painted this. I was going to do another but by then the locals had woken up and as it was the bank holiday there was more than the usual activity. When everyone has gone back to work and the sun comes out again I will get back there,
Other canal scenes are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I was put off from painting this because of the overwhelming green, but I tried washing in reds, oranges and blues to stir things up and layered in masking fluid so that, although the greens do dominate, there is enough to keep a bit of interest going. I think I took this picture last year when I was out painting plein air on the canal and I am thinking of doing more this year, as this time I wont be recovering from a hip operation that kept me grounded for a couple of months.
I also had another go at Uphill Struggle: the painting of Cape Town’s Waterkant suburb, I first published a few weeks ago in February. This time I increased the size of the main figure and painted the road in a warmer hue to emphasise the ambience
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I parked up in the carpark by the canal ready to go off painting and just took a glimpse along the towpath. Fingers of mist still clung to the reeds, avoiding the sun’s weak rays. Out of the reed beds some moorhens glided across the chill water, probably thinking I might be a source of a free breakfast.
I tried this out in pastel to get the wisps of mist. In hindsight I could have done it in watercolour and used white gouache for the mist.
Other canal side paintings are available on my website grahammcquadefineart.com
