Sharp Light on Cottage Backs Collygate

Back to oils again with another view painted from my garden (the dandelions aren't mine by the way). This is a 10 x 12 oil on canvas painted in one wet. My initial motivation for this was the light on the rooftops. Aren't windows difficult? Very easy to overstate the detail of the frames!

Summer Greens

I Needed a change today from all the blues and greys of the English landscape this time of year so I trawled through my reference library and worked up this small oil sketch.

Floods

Couldn't get out to paint today as I'd hoped - the weather was too bad. A blanket of freezing fog hung over the house today. I rummaged through some photo references and found one I liked. It was a snapshot of the recent flooding of the Erewash near Ilkeston. What caught me eye was the intense light on the water accentuated by the low sombre tones of the landscape. I decided to work up a small oil study based on the photo reference. I used a limited pallette of Titanium white, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine and Cerulean Blue. It was painted on a 10x8 muslin covered, oil primed MDF panel.

Work in progress

A bit of a deparure from the norm this one. I have been working on a small oil painting form a combination of imagination and memories. I have been trying to capture the slightly surreal feeling that stems from being alone watching the sunset. Although the painting seems to be starting to work, it still needs something but, at this moment, I'm not sure what. Perhaps I will leave it alone for a few days and hopefully it will start to speak to me. Sometimes you need to do that with a painting.

Autumn on the Nottingham Canal

This was painted alla prima in about two hours (It would have been quicker but I got carried away talking to passers by) towards the end of October last year. The support is one of my ususal suspects - a 10 x 8 gesso primed MDF board.