A Burns Day Neep

To celebrate Burns Day here's a sketch of a turnip, which in Scotland is called a neep. (As in haggis, neeps, and tatties). Said massive turnip was grown by my Dad, who's really quite keen on giant veg. I still remember the humiliation of me and my sister being photographed for the local paper 20 years ago or so alongside one of Dads prizewinning giant cabbages. Later when I was at college in Dundee our ceramics teacher asked us to bring in some vegetables to use as sculpture models, but my carrots were dismissed as being too scary due to their post-apocalyptic appearance.

A Borders View (Clearfelling)

Firstly, a very Happy New Year!
This promises to be an exciting one, certainly if doom everywhich way you turn adds that much needed spice to your life. But regardless of what else happens in 2012 and beyond, painters will continue to paint. Painting is a pathological disorder, and as a lifelong 'sufferer', I find myself particularly drawn to, (or rather drawing), beauty in the outwardly most damaged of places. Such as this oil sketch of the clear felled hills on the road to Moffat, in the Scottish Borders. We often take the A701 on our way to or from 'home' in Fife, because it is nicer than the motorway, there is good food to be had*, and most importantly of all there are bleak hills, bog, mist, windmills and forestry plantations... A landscape painters paradise!

Conifer plantations are not native in Scotland. They were mainly planted between the 1950's and 1990's, for softwood timber production. Little light penetrates to the forest floor and they support very few other species. When the trees mature they are usually clear felled. I'm interested in painting such landscapes because they are so striking and yet so overlooked, empty, devoid of animal life and human interest. It's a landscape which is so obviously ugly, scarred and damaged and yet really quite beautiful. If this isn't enough of an excuse, I also think forestry plantations in Scotland, or at least the practice of clear felling, will die out sooner or later, as it is becoming uneconomical in the face of competition.



*At the Buccleuch Arms Hotel

Solstice in't Woods

Happy Solstice!

This acrylic painting is of the winter sun rising through beech woodland by Jumbles Reservoir, Lancashire. It was a beautiful fairytale scene, to which some have implied my painting adds a certain 'Grimm' factor to...! However, read it as you wish; it was meant to be magical.

I love the effect of light through trees; it's something I'm slightly obsessed by and often try to capture in photos as well as paintings. I took the two photos on Sunday when we were at a Solstice BBQ in some woods north of Lancaster. I climbed up a stalkers' ladder to take the shot of the Scots Pines.

Ahead of the storm

We've just returned from four days dodging 'mini' storms on the beautiful Isle of Mull, before narrowly missing being stranded by the current hurricane force winds (also known as Hurricane Bawbag). I had many opportunities to paint my favourite colour. Blae is a Scots word, sorely lacking in English (well, for an art teacher it would be useful!), and it means slate blue/grey. The colour of storm clouds or a heavy sea.
I don't think I could ever tire of Scotland's west coast,* I'm spellbound by the colours, light and wildlife. On this trip I managed to paint outside once in a rare spell of calm, the rest of the time I peered through the tiny windows of our blackhouse or painted from memory.

Each morning I went down to the shore at Haunn with Ashby, where he occupied himself with the important task of fighting kelp and limpets. On Monday morning I came across an otter only 2 or 3 meters away, holding a large sea urchin. The strength of the wind was such it didn't notice me for a few precious seconds. It didn't notice Ashby at all, nor he it - just shows you can indeed see wildlife with a dog in tow particularly if the dog is glaikit enough. The sea eagles of Mull are not fussed by dogs, either, unless the dog in question is small enough to form a tasty lunch. After scanning the skies each day we finally saw two sea eagles yesterday morning, they flew right above us as we headed for the ferry. Pure white tails and a 2 metre wingspan - there's no way you could mistake them for anything else.

We stayed in a beautifully restored blackhouse at Haunn (meaning harbour), on Treshnish Point. See www.treshnish.co.uk/ I wholeheartedly recommend a stay there, certainly for lovers of wildlife. I'd been there before with my family 20 years ago, but nowadays there is electricity and running water! The farm has won all sorts of environmental accolades. In the last sketch, of Treshnish Point, you can see some little black blobs. They're the herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle, who sheltered in a line from the howling winds.

* On second thoughts, yes, I can tire of the west coast in certain circumstances - I remember once abandoning a fully cooked dinner on the fire and spending all night hungry in the tent rather than face the midges any longer. And this was on the beach where the midges are usually less bad.

Lake Alaotra poster for the Ako Project

This latest poster in the Ako series will hopefully be going to press shortly...that is assuming another species hasn't gone extinct in the meantime and needs to be edited out. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the finished illustration of the habitat and wildlife of Lake Alaotra shows two Madagascar pochards where originally there was going to be an Alaotran grebe. The grebe was declared officially extinct early in the summer, whereas the pochard is 'merely' critically endangered (through habitat loss). On the other hand, Durrell's Vontsira, the animal that looks a bit like an otter, or as Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust describe it; 'a scruffy ferret' was first seen only in 2004 and scientifically named in 2010 - the first new species of meat eating mammal discovered in 24 years. It will be interesting to see how long this species survives.

Dogs dogs glorious dogs

I love dogs and I love painting dogs! It's very theraputic to occasionally paint extremely cute things like labrador puppies, and strangely satisfying to paint and then exhibit something that would almost certainly get you a 'Fail' in a fine art degree.
These acrylic paintings (10" x 10") are now for sale in Bellwood & Wright Fine Arts, Lancaster.

Pastel life drawing and Reverse Picasso

When I overcome my dislike of their dry dusty feeling, I find that pastels are a great medium, especially if you love bright colours. I often find that the less I blend colours the better the drawing works. I tried to use the pastels tonally without caring so much about the precise colour. My brain usually stops focussing properly after about 3 or 4 hours, at which point I like to draw other people with superior concentration spans finishing their paintings; the sketch shows Milan Ivanic painting a portrait. The following day I saw the Abstruse Goose cartoon.