Hot on the heels of my other miniature watercolour series (see: Dartmoor Scenes, House Plants, Capital City Landmarks), the next group of pictures that I painted were slightly larger, rectangular, and given the working title of Mysterious Britain. My idea was to select various ancient landmarks from around the United Kingdom that have some aura of mystery, largely a result of their age.
I started off with a fairly obvious subject for the first picture, the prehistoric megalithic structure known as Stonehenge in Wiltshire, much feared by those who travel along the A303 knowing that there is a very high chance that they will be held up by traffic in its vicinity. I remained in the southwest of England for the next two pictures, to Somerset for a mist-shrouded Glastonbury Tor at sunset (with its much debated history and reputed links to the legend of King Arthur) and St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall (for which there is evidence of population between 4000 and 2500 BCE). But perhaps I should write not describe the latter site as being in England at all and refer to its location as Kernow…
Next, I popped up to northwest Wales (Cymru) for a picture of the prehistoric burial chamber Bryn Celli Ddu (‘the mound in the dark grove’) in Ynys Mon (Anglesey), before returning to the southwest for the later Neolithic or early Bronze Age group of standing stones known as Men-an-Tol (‘stone with a hole’).
Finally, my painting activity for this series took me to the far north, almost as far as it is possible to get in the United Kingdom, to The Ring of Brodgar, a neolithic henge and stone circle on Mainland, the largest island in Orkney.
I enjoyed painting this series and was pleased that for the most part I managed to keep the pictures simple, not putting in too much detail and using a fairly limited colour palette. I’ve tried to pick a favourite, but there are aspects of almost all of the pictures that I particularly like so I’ve not been successful – the simplicity of Stonehenge, the mystery of Glastonbury Tor, the causeway stones of St Michael’s Mount and the little white house behind Bryn Celli Ddu. But like a lot of things, I like the way that these pictures work as a set – taking the viewer on a whistle-stop tour of just a few of the many wonderful locations of Mysterious Britain.
Do you have a favourite? Add a comment to let me know if you do!
Tim O'Hare 