Unexpected sketching



watercolour and coloured pencil

pastel

Last week I took advantage of an unexpected free afternoon to go down to the beach for some sketching. I sat on the sliver of dunes that run between the beach and the land that runs towards Hengistbury Head. There was quite a breeze coming off the sea that day but I found a sheltered little spot and hunkered down for the afternoon.

The first sketch was watercolour and whilst I was happy with the sky and half of the water I just lost it halfway down the page, so I attacked it with coloured pencil.  The second sketch is lightly better, as the sun had moved around it gave some beautiful shadows that just cried out to be done in pastel. Both sketches are slightly smaller than A4.





Mixing it up a bit

 

This is another experiment using monoprints, on the left I'd added watercolour which resisted the ink of the monoprint. There wasn't very much bare paper in the top area so really the change was nominal. My intention was to slightly refine the drawing and beef up the colour in some areas whilst still keeping lots of the mark making of the print.

On the right is a picture of the same piece with added colour pencil (Derwent). This toned down some clumsy areas where the ink had been too thick but flattened out the light in the tops of the reeds.

To gain back light and get in even more colour I worked back in with pastel. Believe it or not there is still quite a bit of the original monoprint visible. I've added a detail of the painting which shows the amount of colour more truly, the photo of the whole has flattened it somewhat.

A grand day out

On Friday I had the great fortune of meeting up with blogger buddy  Roger Seddon  for a sketching trip to Hengistbury Head. It was a beautiful day made even better by good company. Roger has posted his work from the day  here . Using a bank to shelter from the breeze we settled down to sketch the the view to Christchurch Priory across the reedbeds of Christchurch Bay.

I started a graphite sketch to loosely plot out some shapes and tones. The thing that caught my eye was the contrast of tone between the end of the shale and the dark shadow of the bank behind. I was sitting on the shingle and had a low viewpoint and so to accentuate this tried a portrait format for a pastel sketch. On reflection I think maybe a square format would have been better.

Aside from sketching, it was a really great day. It's so nice to meet a fellow blogger out of the confines of cyberspace. It seems Roger enjoyed it too so hopefully it will be the first in a series of sketching expeditions.

(This post is decidedly late due to blogger gremlins, which I hope have all been sorted now. I seem to have some weirdness in my tags still, has anyone else?)

Workshop fun with Jane Puckering

Phew! What a day...the workshop that I went to run by Jane Puckering was sooooo good, one of the best ones I've ever been to. Her enthusiasm and energy were infectious, making you feel like anything is possible. Using acrylic with pastel is a whole new ball game to me and I was intrigued to find out more about the technique. 

 Jane began painting a very wet and very loose under painting in really fluid acrylic, there were lots of beautiful runs and dribbles in the paint. Once this was dry she showed us a medium called 'acrylic ground for pastels' which is made by a company called Golden. She uses it diluted 40% with water and paints it on top of the acrylic under painting in broad directional strokes. You can also use this medium on top of a watercolour under painting as it dries clear without disturbing it and then pastel on top.

All fired up we made our own under paintings, some people using acrylic and some working with watercolour.  I was working on a pre-primed piece of MDF and I really enjoyed this bit, lots of flinging paint and letting the liquid do the work.

I'd decided to stay with the same palette that I've been working with lately of indanthrene blue, quinacridone burnt orange, golden yellow and azure blue. I was working from my sketches of Kimmeridge and wanted to really explore the marks that I could make. In the under painting you can see where I've dribbled water through the wet paint, diluting areas and letting it run.

Whilst our under paintings were drying Jane then showed us how pastel could be applied on top. She showed us how you could use the marks in the under painting to draw out areas and cover over any passages that weren't conducive to the final painting.
At the end of stage 2 with pastel applied but lots of under painting showing through I really should have stopped. However I carried on adding in the suggestion of the headland and completely overworking the rest. Jane explained that one of the beauties of this techniques is that as the medium used is acrylic based I can just wash off any offending parts (for me in this case the flat bed of rock) to take it back to the under painting and then I can just start again. I'm going to live with the mistakes for a few days and analyse how I will take my second shot.

There was still some time to go of the workshop so I thought I'd have another go on a second composition. This time the MDF wasn't primed and I went straight in with the acrylic under painting letting alot of the buff of the board show through. Once it was dry I added the medium and began the pastel stage. I was halfway through when the call went out that we'd be finishing in twenty minutes for a critique to finish the afternoon. Yikes! I had to get my skates on..

I was much happier with this piece as there are still passages of the under painting showing through and the marks are more dominant. I'm thinking that I need to work against the clock more often - no time to fiddle. Looking at it on screen I can see I need to crop about a 6th from the sky for a better composition and maybe darken the lower 6th.

Yesterday was such a great day, it's always so good to learn new techniques and it's certainly given me a lot to ponder. I'm sure I will play with the technique again but more importantly, for me, it's shown me a way of loosening up and exploring the painted mark. Jane regularly runs workshops in Sway, there's a list on her website, so if you feel like treating yourself I'd thoroughly recommend taking one.

Head in the clouds



©2011 Lisa Le Quelenec



A couple of sky studies from my sketchbook done in pastel. It was strange to see the sun turn golden inbetween two banks of cloud - like it was trying to barge it's way through.

Memory paintings at Loriann's and a trip to Jersey

At the end of yesterday's post I wrote about the challenge Loriann had set about painting from memory. Well today she's posted paintings by artists that took up the challenge. There's a beautiful mix of work and it's interesting to see how everyone reacted to the challenge. Pop on over and take a peek.

Below is the memory sketch I sent Loriann, it's in pastel pencil just under A5 in size and is of one of my favourite places in the world. It's St. Ouens Bay in Jersey (Channel Islands - 14 miles off the coast of France although part of Great Britain) it's the island where I was born and raised. In the bay is a martello tower called La Rocco Tower, of which there are a number around the island that were used as defences.

The reflections of the tower in the wet sand are something that I've sketched and painted many times. This particular day stands out in my mind it was December and was really cold, all the colour had washed out and the beach was empty. Even though this is a place that I feel very connected to and a place that I have experienced a large number of times it was still very challenging to attempt to capture it with no references - not even a sketch.

Thank you Loriann for starting this challenge it's been really good fun.

Sky sketchbook pages

Three little cloud sketches of the skies from the studio window over the last week. The weather has been changeable and so there have been lots of visual treats. The last one believe it or not was from around 2.30 yesterday. I was busying priming canvas and starting the under painting for a new piece when it suddenly got very dark. I only realised when my nose was virtually resting on the canvas, I was so absorbed in what I was doing, just how dark it had got. Glancing out of the window I saw these beautiful colours and had to grab my pastels to get it down on paper. They only lasted for about twenty minutes and then the sunshine returned.

Perfect weather for clouds....

Today the weather has been perfect for cloud sketching, very sunny with a brisk breeze so lots of changing cloud forms to sketch. I've spent most of the day sketching and when I wasn't I've been obsessively keeping my eye on the windows to capture the shapes and tones in my memory.

More cloud sketching

After a day of heavy rain yesterday a little respite and time for sketching.

All were done in pastel in my cachet sketch book and are slightly smaller that A5.

Back to the DIY now, I'm finding something strangely zen-like in skimming plaster onto a wall, it's like giant palette knife painting.

Sketching clouds

I thought I'd show you some of the cloud sketching that I've been doing. They are all in pastel in my Daler Rowney Cachet A5 sketchbook which I have dedicated to cloud studies. I love the mid tone of this paper, it gives a nice warm glow to the pastel and has just enough tooth for quick sketches. I'm looking forward to the sun rise and sunsets this autumn, normally by the end of September we start to get spectacular displays with the changeable weather.

Cloud Sketch I - pastel

There was so much contrast on this day between the clouds and the sea. The sketch was done very quickly, not more than ten minutes as I knew I needed to reach cover before the downpour started. - I'm glad I did!

Cloud Sketch II - pastel

The next two were done from my workroom window. I've put my desk in front of the window to make the most of the light but also so I can be distracted by the birds on the feeder in the garden. They keep me entertained with all their antics.

Cloud Sketch III - pastel

It was a sunny and warm weekend and I managed to get out for a couple of hours for a walk on the beach. It blew the cobwebs away nicely and now I'm all set for the busy week ahead. There's lots of mount cutting, labelling, packing and wrapping to do ready for the show. I'd better get my skates on....

Pastel love....

I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to colour and I have a growing collection of  pastels. I love opening a box of them to look at the scrummy sticks of perfect pigments..... bliss. This is a medium that I seem to be using more and more of lately. I love that it forces me to think more about the mark making and not just about colour/tonal relationships, composition etc. Below are two versions from the same sketch that I did out in the New Forest, an experiment in colour and mood. I love silver birch for their colour and texture, it's a subject that I keep coming back to.

Through the Forest

pastel on paper 14x19cm 

Forest Cool

pastel on paper 14x19cm

If you enjoy pastels I'd recommend taking a look at loriann's blog, she posts every day, is very generous with sharing her techniques and her work is simply stunning.