Autumn is here, and with it has come a lot of weather. Forget the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The relentless rainstorms of recent weeks have wreaked havoc across the country, and it hasn't been a time for getting out with an easel and a big painting board. I learned that lesson long ago; there I was, up on an exposed seabank, while the wind buffetted the board and fought me for control of the brush. It ended with both paper and board being whipped into the air by an almighty gust and deposited in a nearby dyke. Whenever I've told that story I've been greeted by the mystified comment of, 'Why do it?' Well, had I been a mountaineer, the answer would probably be 'because it's there.' In the case of a Norfolk wind, it's everywhere at once. The fact is that the most dramatic subjects tend to appear in the worst of the weather. A blustery wind can bring fantastic skies, fast-moving clouds of brilliant white, pale gold and violet-grey, tumbling and racing across the blue. That is when I spend hours walking with sketchbook and camera and jotting down brief plein-air studies. Left: Cloud, Light and Storm-Tossed Birds. In this sky study, the paint was drying quickly, enabling me to superimpose translucent layers of cloud over the first wet-in-wet wash. I was walking along the sea bank at Overy Staithe when I saw a dramatic stormy subject that I just had to paint. The creek shone white under a glowering sky, and from foreground to horizon lay swathes of mingling greens and earth colours. It was a case of 'bung it down fast and pack up before the raincloud catches up with me'. I used a limited palette of French Ultramarine, Raw Sienna, Light Red, and Prussian Blue, working 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. 'Can't you just re-create it from a photo in the studio?' Well, sort of – but working out on site lends a sense of immediacy, of being there in the moment, that is not easy to reproduce in the comfort of 'The Great Indoors'. Right: Rain Blotches. Of course, there are some effects that are not all that desirable to create out of doors either – such as when a passing cloud decides to offload its surplus water directly onto a promising sky study. It's pot luck whether the rain 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...
'Cloud, Light and Storm-tossed Birds', 'Threatening Sky at Overy Staithe' and 'Rain Blotches' were all painted in watercolour on Canson mi teintes paper. Comments are closed.
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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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