ACROSS THE MERSEY ESTUARY – ACRYLIC PAINTING

In January I did some sketches based on a Christmas walk we took and posted the results shortly after. I thought that I might transfer one of them to a canvas.

With this view of the Mersey I wanted more contrast in the sky, more coherent grasses, and greater emphasis on the complementaries between land and sky. I had an old canvas that I had started to gesso over – so I completed the job and got to work on the painting.

I didnt use many brushes on this one. It was mainly fingers blending the few colours on the estuary and sky and then finger blending another set of colours on the marram grass covering the dunes. Then I put some masking tape down and found a brush to render the far shore and flick in some waves on the water. A bigger brush sculpted some texture to the grasses – added a few birds and the job was done.

It’s not much, but that’s what it’s like around here.

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

LOW TIDE AT THE ALT ESTUARY – PASTEL PAINTING

First, may I wish readers a merry Christmas even though I present this unseasonal image. It is the small tributary, the Alt, discharging into the Mersey estuary with the Wirral in the background and possibly a hint of the Welsh mountains beyond.

I just liked the snaking course of the river as it finds its way into the Mersey. The warm and the cool colours interlocking at low tide, with the sands exposed, providing refuge for seabirds.

The Alt is a popular summer mooring point for yachts and other pleasure vessels, which are stood to the right, concealed by the sand dunes and soft cliffs you see in the foreground.

A marine painting, as we ready ourselves to sail into another new year.

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

AUTUMN ON THE ALT ESTUARY – PASTEL PAINTING

I’ve painted this view before but had forgotten about it until I was preparing this blog.

With the sale of a coastal painting this week as well as preparing for a couple of exhibitions and doing a lot of pastel work, especially for the demos and workshops I’m running this month and next, I was looking around for likely subjects.

So I had a go at this, which is the estuary of a small river, the Alt, as it empties out into the bigger Mersey Estuary at the north end of Liverpool. In the summer, the channel, close to the dunes, is lined with moored yachts, but as the year dwindles towards its end they are brought ashore and placed in a compound.

This view is from the dunes looking over the Mersey towards the Wirral peninsular that can be just picked out in the haze. If you look hard there is a tanker making a break for the Irish sea.

The dark headland behind the marram grasses is made up of building rubble from the bombed out Liverpool, which was dumped there after the second world war. As you walk along the beach you can find carved fascias to old buildings amongst the sea smoothed bricks and concrete. Someone once told me that they found half of a tombstone there.

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

MERSEY MORNING – ACRYLIC PAINTING

Sitting atop of a sand dune just south of Formby, I had a good view of the mouth of the Mersey. Reflective objects sang bright in the morning sun and I painted this view in watercolour, disturbed only by distant cries of gulls and lapwings. Not a bad way to start the day.

When I got home and looked at my endeavours I thought that pastel or acrylic would be a better medium for this painting. Eventually I plumped for acrylic because of the fiddly nature of the wind turbine and ship, though other aspects would have been easier in pastel.

I did debate about putting wind turbines in at all – there are quite a few more off to the right. In the end you got a token wind turbine and anyway, it adds a bit of balance to the piece.

Other views of the Mersey are available for sale on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

KOM OMBO AND EDFU – WATERCOLOUR SKETCHES

For me, Monday was a red letter day on this trip. In the afternoon we moored up right next to this temple at Kom Ombo, so for once I was able to sketch some of the architecture we had come to see. It is quite a late temple by Egyptian standards being started in the 2nd century BC. A giveaway is the ornate column tops which indicates Greek or Roman influence. In fact it had a whole range of column decoration. It is also unusual in that it is dedicated to two deities, the falcon headed Horus and Sobek, the local crocodile headed god. There were a lot of crocodile mummies on display in the museum – though, disappointingly, none in the river ( crocs not mummies).

I returned to the boat after the visit to the temple and museum and had about an hour to get this down. The warm evening light mellowed the stonework and I got a fair bit done before we set sail again, though I had to do the sketch in a rush.

On that same Monday, we woke up to find we had moored right on the waterfront of the town of Edfu. Normally we moored in walled areas or in out of the way and uninteresting places. On this morning we were right in the thick of it with touristy horse drawn carriages transporting people to the local temple of Horus. ( though being in the thick of it meant we were also close to the mosque, and got called to prayer at 5am – on this occasion I declined the invite) I had breakfast and hurried up on deck to get a flavour of the place before we set off. Again, another hurried sketch, which I finished as we headed to Kom Ombo.

Other townscapes are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com

RECEDING TIDE – WATERCOLOUR PAINTING

A view of the Mersey Estuary under a low afternoon sun with the Wirral Peninsular in the background and just a hint of the wind turbines. Originally I painted the gulls bigger, but they dominated, as gulls do. Now they sit a little more reservedly in the landscape.

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

LOW TIDE AND A LOW LIGHT ON THE MERSEY – PASTEL PAINTING

Well, I did say I might do it. A couple of blogs ago I showed the mouth of the Mersey from Formby where last weekend we sat in the sun and ate our sandwiches with our French friends. This was the next day, in south Liverpool, looking across the river ( as opposed to the estuary, the day before). The weather was also different: the rain forcing us to eat our sandwiches in the car. Still, we had a walk and returning to the car the sun was breaking through the clouds in the late afternoon, highlighting the tops of the water’s ripples and contours of the exposed mud.

Other scenes of Liverpool  are available on my website: grahammcquadefineart.com