Tag: drawing

Quantock Paintings – Part 2 #art

Following on from my previous art post (Quantock Paintings – Part 1), here are a few more of the paintings that I did during, or shortly after returning home from, our short break in Crowcombe, at the foot of the Quantock Hills in Somerset, last June.

First, here are a couple of pictures depicting views from walks that we did. Both are in my ‘normal’ style, a simple ink pen sketch with the watercolours added on top. I think that I have a tendency to try to put a lot of detail into my drawings (at least until I get bored and start scribbling in trees and foliage), but I am conscious that with painting it is often a case of ‘less is more’. In these two pictures I think that I managed to hold myself in check and kept the drawings fairly simple and ‘loose’. The pictures show Crowcombe Church and a view of the coastline at East Quantoxhead…

Crowcombe Church
View of East Quantoxhead (with a bit of an issue on the right-hand edge!)

Next, I’ve included the results of an attempt to play with a slightly different approach, eschewing entirely the use of an ink pen to create a base sketch, and instead, going straight for the watercolour paints. I think that in many people’s minds, traditional (true?) watercolour paintings use only paints, generally placing these on a much wetter surface than I use, but I’ve not had any artistic training whatsoever so that’s not how my work has evolved. This picture shows a view from another of the walks that we did, looking west towards Minehead across hedge-lined fields with a riot of wildflowers in the foreground…

Somerset Fields with Wildflowers (no ink)

The vast majority of my paintings are of landscapes in one form or another. This is partly because I like landscapes, but also partly because whilst I might be able to make a decent fist of painting trees, fields, hills and buildings etc., I’m pretty much hopeless at drawing and painting people and animals. So, the picture below is a little unusual because it features me, standing at a gate looking east from the main ridge of the Quantock Hills. I like this picture because it is a bit quirky, with some nice ‘busy’ trees, but I don’t think it does anything to improve my reputation as a painter of people!

Through the Trees

Finally, it’s become a tradition now that I paint a picture showing whatever accommodation we have stayed in when we are away, which we then leave behind as a thank you to the owner of the accommodation. In this case, we were staying in a delightful little Shepherd’s Hut, with a sunset view towards Exmoor. Now, for me to describe a Shepherd’s Hut as ‘delightful’ is something of a miracle, but although the picture doesn’t capture the view, I think it does capture something of the charm of the place.

Crowcombe Short-Break Shepherd’s Hut

I’ve written this post almost exactly one year on from our stay in Crowcombe, and it’s been nice to look back on these pictures and be reminded of a really pleasant few days in a quiet and beautiful part of the world.

Walkham Woods (charcoal/watercolour) #art

Since I started drawing and painting back in April 2024 I have primarily worked with ink and watercolour paints, with my ‘go-to’ format being small, usually ~5cm square, pictures on some particular theme that I have chosen to explore for a few days. Producing pictures of that type has become my staple art activity, to the extent that I describe this as my ‘art practice’. However, I am constantly thinking about how I would like to explore different formats and work with different media. This especially happens when I visit an art exhibition, see works by other artists,and wonder what I could produce if I branched out a bit. The funny thing is that prior to my big shift into art in April 2024 I had actually begun to dabble with creating pictures with pastels (e.g. see my post Rediscovering The Artist Within) but I have not returned to pastels once since then.

Sometime back in May I must have been somewhere that brought me into contact with some charcoal drawings. I had a set of charcoal pencils sitting unopened in my art supplies box, and so I thought I would branch out a little and see what happened when I completed the drawing phase of a picture with charcoal, rather than adopting my usual approach of starting off with some faint pencil lines and then going all in with my black ink pen. I think I hoped that the different drawing texture might lead to me producing a more abstract picture. Then, after scribbling away with the charcoal pencil for a bit, I returned to the familiar territory of my watercolour paints to give my drawing some colour.

The result of my efforts is shown in the picture above – a charcoal -cribbles-with-watercolour painting of a row of what I refer to a ‘wall trees’, somewhere in the valley of the River Walkham, from a photo that I had taken on a walk there.

I’m not sure exactly what I think of this picture. It seems quite basic and simple – the trees sitting very much on top of the leafy backdrop and lacking much detail in their trunks and branches – and that simplicity pushes me towards thinking that the picture doesn’t quite work. But I also quite like the more impressionistic look – the rough lines suggesting the texture and structure of the stone wall, and the bright greens and particularly the yellows of the leaf canopy shouting out for attention. The picture has a naivety which I think gives it a certain charm. As I look at the picture, my eyes seem to be drawn in to explore what little detail there is, perhaps more so than happens when viewing one of my more detailed ink and watercolour pictures. Overall, I think that perhaps the switch in drawing medium was successful in helping me to present the view in a more abstract, suggestive manner than my normal ink-and-watercolour approach.

I’ve not had another go with charcoal pencils since I created this picture just over two months ago, but revisiting it now and writing this post has fired me up to spend some more time over the coming period to play around with different approaches and media a bit more. I wonder what will emerge!