Inspired by this years storms

This Winter saw some terrible storms here in the UK with much damage and flooding. As well as flooding from the river and very high tides locally we have also had some landslides with sections of the cliffs tumbling onto the beach. Luckily they have happened at times when no one was around to get hurt. As much as I love a good storm to clear the air, this Winter was hard on many people and I could take no pleasure in them.

This painting was inspired by the feeling of the dark and relentless rain - longing for drier days to come.

Toward the light   watercolour on paper 20x20cm ©2014 Lisa Le Quelenec

Those drier days are here now, touch wood, we have had some lovely hot weather. I still spare a thought for those who are still waiting for their houses to dry out though. It's such a long process and there must be quite a few still waiting to get back to normal.

I enjoy painting storms in watercolour and am wondering if they would work as well in acrylic on a large scale. What do you think? Whilst I like dark watercolour I'm not so keen on dark acrylic, perhaps because of the more dense nature of the medium. I would have to adjust it to a brighter tonal range perhaps? Time to experiment....

Gulls in flight - watercolour sketches

Gull sketchbook  25x5.5cm   ©2014Lisa Le Quelenec

The lions share of the pages from a watercolour sketchbook had been used up in a commission and I was left with a narrow bound book to play with. Using only flame red and turquoise FW ink I painted some diluted backgrounds and once dry sketched gulls in using only white gouache and pencil for the dark wing tips.

The few lines of poetry are from Pablo Neruda's Ode to the Sea Gull; '... ecstatic line of flight.' became almost a mantra as I tried to get the swiftness of the shape in one stroke. There is something very calming and meditative in the repetition of sketching in this way which I enjoyed. My aim was to get to believable shapes using only one or two brushstrokes. I found as I went along that the more I did the more I wanted to do until I had painted just under 150 of them! Then wondered how much better the results would be after another 150. Maybe another sketchbook is waiting to be filled.  - practise makes perfect after all...