Breckland, and Other Loose Watercolours

I mentioned the other day about the balance I am trying to achieve between a loose and slightly impressionistic style, and the more formal traditional watercolour – something that at the moment is a key part of developing my practice.

Here’s some of the other end – much looser, sketchlike experiements in Landscape Watercolour.

This first is another hastily viewed scene, rushing past on the train in East Anglia – as I have said before, Turner beleived Kent had the most beautiful skies, I firmly beleive it is The Fens. This was an attempt to campture this with the sense of movement and non-focus from a train journey.

And moving to the destination of that journey, these are a couple of sketches I took of the Path on The Lizard Nature Reserve in Wymondham – which I painted later in more detail.

And in a similar vein, a path at the top of Meanwoodside, off Parkside Road in Leeds. These are all painted with cheap paints, showing what you can do with basic resources, certainly for sketching.

This next one is the Rhiw Fachno Quarry, in Cwm Penmachno – somewhere I love and am trying to capture from my photos and memories, with limited (so far) success – it’s very hard to get the feeling of the place though it would on first glance lend itself to watercolours perfectly.

Moving back up to Yorkshire now, this is Threshfield Moor, from an old photo. There’s a few of these I want to play with and having looked at a bit of Pip Seymour’s work I have some ideas for something very loose with these.

And (more or less) back home again. This is of course St Aidans, another place I very much love.

These are, as I noted, the other end, perhaps, of the scale. What I am searching for, is just somewhere in between…