Autumn is here and with it some exciting painting opportunities. Forget the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The blustery weather of recent weeks has brought some fantastic skies, fast-moving clouds of brilliant white, pale gold and violet-grey, tumbling and racing across the blue. This is a time when I spend long hours walking and observing, and painting brief plein air studies. There's no chance to indulge in fiddling detail as the Norfolk wind will fight me for control of the brush, get under the painting board to give it a good buffeting and generally play havoc with any carefully planned subject. I use strong bulldog clips to secure the work, but more than once both paper and board have been whipped into the air by a particularly capricious wind and deposited in a nearby dyke. It's a bit like trying to paint in the company of a poltergeist that fancies having a go at art! 'Cloud, light and wind-tossed birds'. You might spot the letters 'J F' written in the sky - it's the kind of thing that happens when you're keying in a bit of structure and the wind grabs hold of the pencil. Or perhaps the arty poltergeist was trying to leave a message... If it isn't wind, it's rain, and with such ever-changing skies my work is almost guaranteed to fall victim to a passing shower. Sometimes I'm able to whip the board off the easel and place it facing away from the weather, and sometimes I'm just not quick enough off the mark, before the painting has collected a rash of rain spots. This is a detail of one such painting. It's pot luck whether the spots create an interesting textural effect or a total write-off. Someone has suggested that it looks a bit like snow. All I can say is I would hate to be bombarded by snowflakes that big... Even if the painting is wrecked, nothing is wasted, as there is no replacement for getting out there and experiencing the landscape at first hand. Photographs are a useful reference to support on-site sketches for later use in the studio, but there are certain qualities in the landscape that a photograph can't capture. As I say on the Home page, 'I need to taste the salt air and feel the wind in my face - to hear the piping of an oystercatcher evokes the essence of a marsh better than any photograph'. 'Threatening sky at Overy Staithe.' Here I worked with a size 20 brush on an 1/8th Imperial sheet. For the benefit of non-painters, that's a very big brush on a very small piece of paper. A case of bung it down fast, before the rain - and the arty poltergeist - catch up! The three studies shown above were painted in watercolour on Canson mi-teintes paper. Plein air painting is extremely rewarding, but it pays to be suitably prepared. Before you go out painting on site, it's a good idea to get some basic techniques under your belt. If you are an Art Club looking for tuition, please get in touch with me via the Contact page to enquire about Painting Demonstrations, or Day Courses in medium techniques.
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Judith Key
Judith Key is a Norfolk based artist, working in watercolour and pastel. She has exhibited with the Society of Graphic Fine Artists and New English Art Club at the Mall Galleries, London. Her paintings are in collections worldwide. Categories
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May 2018
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