Landscapes, Seascapes and Portraits

"Grasmere" Landscape Painting Commission

I’ve been lucky enought to pick up some commissions for paintings recently. So far they have all been landscape commissions (as opposed to portrait commission which are my other favourites). Some artists are notoriously reluctant to agree to commissions, sometimes for quite snobbish reasons (not wanting to pollute the purity of their art). On the contrary, I find commissions to be a welcome relief from the ‘what shall I do today’ question. A commission gives focus, purpose and usually a time limit to the day - all useful drivers for a wooly headed artist!

Watching the TV after School

Here’s a page from one of my sketchbooks. Its so difficult to get catch children sitting still. Sometime you have to catch them during one the rare times of day when they are (relatively) still and quiet.

My sketchbooks are full of very quick and usually unfinished sketches like this. I do feel very jealous of people whose sketchbooks are full of mini-masterpeices on each page. I never seem to have the time to complete my sketches and as a result my sketchbooks are full of half-finished drawings and unidentifiable squiggles.

Seth Godin has a great blog entry called I Need to Build a House, What Kind of Hammer Should I Buy?

I guess many artists are guilty of over-emphasising the importance of the equipment they use. It reminds me that you only need three primary colours plus white, some basic brushes and a length of cheap hardboard to paint a masterpiece.

We focus on the technology of creativity (the pigments, binders, supports, brush types and yes, blogging) and on the techniques (scrumbling, anatomy, cross-hatching, glazing, perspective etc) until it becomes an excuse not to create.

Rivington Sunset

Originally uploaded by David Pott

Today has been a showery and warm day with big, dramatic clouds scudding across a very clear blue sky and occasionally dropping heavy showers on the parts of Lancashire beneath them. The clouds themselves are towering pillows of whiteness underlined by dark grey bands that produce the rain. When the rain falls from beneath the clouds they trail dirty veils of water behind them.

With the youngest child in bed, and the rest of the family playing computer games on the Wii, I packed my sketching equipment and headed up towards the high moorland at the back of Horwich, seeking out the dramatic views that I felt would be produced by the weather.

I wasn’t dissappointed. Anvil shaped thunderclouds made slow but majestic progress from Snowdonia, past the Wirral and alond the Sefton and Fylde coasts where they met the setting sun, silhouetted with the outline of Blackpool Tower below.

I came home with two or three quick sketches, countless photos (like the one at above) and a sense of marvel that nature can create so many rich and contrasting hues in a single sunset.

Hopefully I’ll be able to paint several oil paintings from the sketches, small watercolours and photos I took tonight. Sadly I don’t think any of them will match the original version!

Winter Hill Clouds

I’ve been told many times that, on a clear day, you can see the Isle of Man from the top of Winter Hill. I had begun to wonder if that wasn’t just an urban myth, passed from generation to generation of ramblers.

Now along comes www.viewfinderpanoramas.org - a useful site that contains computer generated panoramas  of views from many mountains around the world, with a special bias towards UK panoramas

Here’s the panorama it generated of the view from Winter Hill. And yes, you can theoretically see the Isle of Man in perfect conditions.

If you’ve ever seen the Isle of Man from Winter Hill, will you let me know? Better still if you can send me a photo!

I stumbled on Sydney Padua’s blog today. Sydney is a London-based animator who with a geekish knowledge of cat anatomy. He’s recently been leading some courses in cat anatomy for animators and has published some of his exquisitley drawn course notes on the web. They’re fabulous - lively, brisk and full of cat-like energy and inquisitiveness. Animators like Sydney have to observe their subjects even more intensely than we artists - every gesture, every nuance must be right.

I love to paint these little seascape paintings. I paint them with bright, jewel-like colours to banish cloudy skies. Click here to buy Small Seascape No3