When you are faced with a wet and wild Saturday

The weather on Saturday was horrendous.  It had all been predicted by the weather gurus, so we were at least ready.

This meant quick dog walks, when we were nearly blown off our feet, so staying indoors for most of the day was the best option.   That gave me an opportunity to tackle a painting that has been waiting in the wings.  Well, the IDEA of a painting.   Now with the storm, I had no excuse.   Here’s a comment I gave on facebook when I had posted the finished piece...

 “I just wanted to say, and perhaps this will help some, but I went about this painting NOT with the notion it had to be Perfect.  Instead I looked upon it as an experiment, if it didn't work out, then I could learn from it.  That took any pressure off my inner critic as I could just Paint and Enjoy.  Turned out I'm very happy with this painting and also the journey of creating it, and that's a BIG part of the process for me.”

Like any painting there are Stages to the process:

1. The subject / Thumbnail sketches - getting the balance of the subject right

2.  Preparing the canvas / grid the canvas / draw the outlines

3.  Get ready to paint / Premix colours - Tones

4.  Have fun painting


Fortunately I remembered to take a photograph in the early stages of the painting, although I should  have done several step-by-step pics.  Anyway, here's the painting on the easel with the sky painted in.

The "PINK" is an acrylic coloured ground on the canvas.  It allows for little portions of the pink to show through when the palette knife/brush 'Misses' the canvas.  I don't fill ALL those little 'Misses' in to begin with, once they are filled, you can never get them back!  So I wait until the end of the painting and review the 'Misses' and cover some of them, leaving just a few to 'Sparkle'

Here's the completed painting:

TITLE:   TIME FOR TEA

(12" x 12" Oil on canvas)

Subject: The TeaRoom, Clovelly, Devon

~ ~ ~

Clovelly

We took our friends Lynn and her husband over to Clovelly. This quaint little village sits on a very steep hill.....another one!   We love our hills here in Devon.

Lynn and I kept stopping to take photos, so the lads had to keep waiting for us...

The cobbled street was quite difficult to walk on, especially as it was so steep.  Going back up proved to be much easier.

I loved the carved design on this building...

 

at this point, Lynn and I opted to sit on this bench and do some sketching.  We left the lads to walk the rest of the way down to the harbour....

There was something nice about looking down onto the rooftops...

which I sketched, but added the paint later.....

We had such a good day with Lynn and her husband Fred

and it was lovely to take them around our

area to show them some of the sights.

Lynn and I got so much fun out of sketching together.