A Few Landscapes

This is a bit of a round up really, of various landscape pictures I have been playing with over the last year.

I’m thinking quite a lot at the moment about my style, my practice – I have a deep love for detailed, “realistic” (insofar as they can be) watercolour landscapes, and I am pushing myself to practice and follow tutorials, as well as painting my own compositions from imagination or my own travels and photography – but at the same time I do find the process finicky and at times a bit of a drudge and I am very much exploring more conceptual and loose ideas.

But anyway, here’s a few vaguely more traditional Landscapes from the last year or so.

So firstly – Glencoe. This is shamelessly from a tutroial by Geoff Kersey, in a book I found on Oxfam. I do love his work and find it very inspiring, and he has an amazing talent for reproducing views in a great style. I enjoyed this one more as it is quite loose and the atmosphere it creates is very compelling. I am seeing this as very much a development excercise to work towards my own images of Wales, specifically the Machno Valley, somewhere I have spent a lot of time and photographed quite intensively.

Next up, one of my own. Piles on Hessle Foreshore, from my trek around the Humber a few years ago. This is in a sense mroe aligned with my own stylistic tendencies, quite loose and simplified, though I have gone for a slightly illustrative approach on the detail. I have a large collection of photographs from here which I intend to work more from.

Next up, Fenland near Peterborough. I am not quite sure where this one fits. Themeatically and stylistically it speaks to my Idyll paintings, and is in a sense that imagined landscape, built from a composite idea of several hastily grabbed images from the train. I’m not 100% happy with it, but it’s a bit of a transition between some images I will post later, and these more structured landscapes.

The next one is a mostly imagined and self composed picture. The inspiration was a quick tutorial by Geoff Kersey again, showing the wet in wet trees, but I developed this into a more complete composition, and one I am exploring more. This is also big – it’s half-imperial or 55 x 37cm! This is large for a complex watercolour and for once I did settle into this lengthy project.

After a few tries at Meanwood Bridge – one a disaster, one which was not want I was aiming for, but sold, I decided to try and break the composition down a little and work on the feel of the place. It’s interesting – the first painting captured the composition and the reality of the place – which is quite dank and wet, but did not for me capture the feeling it gives me which is much lighter. I feel this image, based on that scene captures the magic better.

Next up is the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, somewhere I have also walked and photographes quite extensively. This is some of the more wooded sections between Marsden and Slaithwaite. For me this image captures the looser style I am after very well.

Finally a more traditional view and style – Pen-y-Ghent in autumn, from a photo I took probably getting on for 40 years ago now! I’m very pleased with how the colours work in this one.