A Work In Progress: High Ousegate, York.

I had intended spending Saturday and Sunday painting, but couldn't because I spent Saturday in bed with a sickness bug (which brought me home early from the cricket club on Friday evening). I did manage to start the following this afternoon, whilst Sara built 'The Great Eggscape' with Archie, for his school's egg decorating competition.
This canvas is an old one, saved from the skip at school, and is an odd shape. I have had several goes at painting it, with no real success. Hopefully this will be more successful than previous efforts..

I'm using linseed oil to thin the paint. I usually use turps...if I use anything. Oil makes the paint more fluid, which is quite nice to handle, but will inevitably require more drying time. I intend working on this painting over a longer period of time.

It's nice pushing the paint around, without 'scrubbing'. It's nice not have the sicative effect of turps/white spirit.

Slowly building up and indicating where the figures will go.

Detail. 

I intend keeping this much more painterly than some of my other paintings.

That's it for now.

Stage 2.

Having let the paint dry for a week, I have had another go at it.

I'm starting to build up some of the details a little, but trying to retain the painterliness.

Hmmm... I like the left hand side more than the right. Time to let it dry again and then work back into it.

Stage 3.

The paint had dried sufficiently to work into this (I have been working on another piece whilst waiting for it to dry - a woodland scene, to be added later). I have worked into both shops, left and right, cleaned the sky up a little, and worked into the floor. After this I had a look at the figures. I will leave it for a while now and live with it for a bit. I may feel like coming back to it later.

A few details...

High Ousegate, York.

More Paris

Friday night and we have just got in after going straight from school to town with Archie, so that he could spend his Waterstones vouchers. Four books later (2 Darren Shann's and 2 by some other author + a few ideas for yours truly), and we took him for a hot chocolate in Pret a Manger (do they pay corporation tax?) - by-the-way, it is currently cheaper to get your drinks by buying a £1.50 chocolate bars, because they throw the drinks in free. Having got home Archie has decided that he doesn't want to watch a family film tonight - he'd rather read. Excellent! That gives me chance to post the second painting that I completed after our Paris trip. This one is from some photos that I took out side the Pumpypants (Pompidou) centre.

Blocking in.

A little definitition.

 Establishing tones. 

Starting to build it up. 

 A little more detail.

Finished.

Paris Contre Jour

Paris

Having returned from a great trip to Paris, with a fantastic bunch of students and colleagues, we broke up for half-term and I found time to do some painting. 

I love Paris. It just seems so much more spacious than London, it's better to look at, and it feels more lived in. The buildings are great, and because it seems more spacious, the light seems to bounce around more.

We dropped lucky with the weather, with hardly any rain, and the weekend wasn't dominated with that blanket of cloud that we often get in the winter, especially around York.

This picture is from one of the photos that I took whilst there. I haven't got a clue which street it is; it was taken from the coach window on our way back to the hotel at the end of the day, and actually, this was on one of the days when the weather wasn't great.

Initial blocking in..

A little more drawing..

A few more details, including some cars.

..starting to establish the tones..

...

...

I decided that I didn't like it at this stage..

...so scraped some of the paint off, and scrubbed into it with a dirty brush. I enjoyed this, and liked what it did to the painting, so I started working back into it. 

This is the finished painting:

'Paris: February Afternoon'

I've Been Asked To Leave Better Woods Than These..

It's always a pleasure to meet the landed gentry. Not so much cantankerous old wannabes. I went for a walk yesterday in Huby Woods. After a while I strayed off the public footpath onto a non-public footpath (it had no signs, gates or fences), where I was approached by a COC(K) (Cantankerous Old Curmudgeon), who informed me that I shouldn't be there, and that he wouldn't come on my garden. I apologised and told him that I would leave, adding that I wasn't aware that it was private. "Well it is. We're trying to hunt. I don't go on your garden". "I have apologised and I'm leaving, so you don't need to labour the point" I told him. "Well you shouldn't be here, it's private". "Again, sorry" I said, "but there are no signs".  "Well, you should use some common sense. I bet there are no private signs on your garden are there?". "It's not quite the same is it? And I'm not Psychic". "You should be!" He said. "Are you?" I asked. "Yes" he said. " I thought you would be. You're also rude" I said, and left.
I think I was very restrained.
Anyway, it was worth the hassle. The walk gave me an idea for a painting, which I have spent the rest of the weekend working on.

First Painting of the New Year

...first since early December actually. What with a chest infection, manflu and a busy Christmas, I haven't been able to paint.

This painting is set on Parliament street in York. 

I used this opportunity to try out my new brushes, which Father Christmas brought for me. They are Egberts, which is like a filbert, but with longer bristles. They are going to take a little getting used to, and I suspect they will be better for portrait work, so I might try some of that in the next few months.

Parliament Street was built in 1834 and it leads from St Sampson's Square to Piccadilly.

Hmmm. One of York's newer streets then.

'B4 It Rains Again. Parliament Street, York'

Oil on Canvas.

River Kyle; Tollerton

This is a scene that I have painted before. It's a view of the river Kyle, a small river (at 6 miles one of the smallest in the country) which flows through our village (Alne), on  through Tollerton and into Newton-on-Ouse, where it joins the river Ouse. Although some stretches are straight and featureless, the Kyle is really beautiful in parts, and quite wild. It is a small river but it does have fish in it; I have seen shoals of roach and dace, although you don't see them very often. Occasionally the Kyle has otters in it. Sara saw one in the village a couple of years ago, and I've seen foot prints. It bursts it's banks fairly regularly, including twice recently. After the first of these we drove past a heron every day for a week on our way to work, hunting fish in the flooded field next to the river, stranded after the river level had gone back down.
This is a painting of the flood plain; Tollerton Ings.

As usual I have put the painting on in stages. At the end I have included the first painting I made of this scene. It's a bigger painting, done a couple of years ago, and is obviously in winter. 

It's good to see them side by side.

Blocking in. Reflecting on this approach, and questioning whether or not I should try starting in a different way has given me an idea for Year 8 work now that they have finished their clay masks. I'm thinking Japanese notan designs as paper-cuts.

 ..laying in the main colours...

..trying to establish the contrasts as a design. ..

..laying down some texture and more local colour.. 

..autumnal colours added. Finished.

River Kyle; Tollerton Ings.

The same view 2 years (?) earlier, in the winter.

River Kyle: Tollerton Ings.

Long Time No Post: Stonegate

I nearly didn't post this painting because after I had finished painting it, and spent ages over it, I found that I don't actually like it. I need to be a bit more ruthless sometimes, I think, and be prepared to stop when I don't like what I'm doing. The problem is, most paintings go through a stage where I don't like them. As I regularly tell the students; you have to try to look beyond where you're at, and visualise the finished piece.
It can be very difficult scrapping something that you have invested time in. I'm the same reading books - I'll get so far into a book, decide it's not for me...but I've got to finish it!
This is a painting of the corner of Blake Street and Stonegate.
Apparently 6 feet under Stonegate lies the Roman Via Praetoria, the road that connected the basilica at the centre of the fortress to the bridge over the river Ouse and, therefore, the civilian settlement on the other side. Francis Drake, in 1736, records the name coming from the amount of stone that made it's way down Stonegate as they built the minster.