I suppose it was the early morning mistiness and recession past the trees which interested me as much as the horses. This was done with three colours cad. red, cad. yellow and ultramarine and mixing a lot of them on the paper.
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Temperature inversions on the low lying land behind Southport causes mist to hover in the morning. The fields drop because of the drainage, but the buildings and roads remain at their original height on their foundations – well most of the time – so you see buildings and roadside trees popping up like figures in a mirage surrounded by haziness.
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Working on a handmade canvas I thought that I might revert to a style I once adopted. Ironically I used more colours in this painting than in many of the watercolours I paint and it took a lot longer with all the preliminary sketches and the assessment of the marks and then there were the corrections – it fair wore me out.
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These ducks amused me, but really I was taken by the row of distant trees in the morning light which I got by splattering colour into a sprayed paper.
Other landscapes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
This view is from an early morning outing I did at the end of April and from which I’ve already posted a number of paintings, around 6 I think so it was a productive morning although I paid the price as my bike got a puncture and I had to walk the last 4 miles home.
This view allowed me to play around with some textural work, something that I am experimenting with watercolour at the moment.
Other landscapes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
Some time ago I reported, after painting the plein air Downholland Farm I posted, that I had left my portable palette behind. When I came back to search for it I came in my car and had to park on some waste land and the easiest way was to cut through this small copse. I loved the evening light coming in through the trees and the branches and trunks cutting across the scene making an almost stained glass effect. When I came out of hospital last week I thought that I could do this in pastel and sat down and cracked on and produced this pastel below:
I thought that the pastel would allow me to get the criss-crossing branches easier and also allow me to work up the foliage catching the light in the shadows. I was unhappy with the results and decided to have another go in watercolour. I tried a splattering approach with the foliage on the watercolour and got some wonderful textures, but had to go over a lot of it in order to get the tonal contrast I was after. In the end the result was better but still it lacked the impact that I was after.
Other landscapes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
I decided to work up a couple of paintings I did as plein air sketches and posted a few weeks ago. I was a bit disappointed with the results and am trying to work out why I feel this way. I think this one could have been done with more textured foreground and less of the ploughed field although I do have a problem with the large amounts of green that that might produce.
This second one might do with increasing the contrasts but again I am concerned with masses of green. I will leave both in the studio and mull over them whilst I get on with something new.
Other landscape paintings are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com
