A Cliffhanger?

Continuing momentum here, I thought I might have a go at an image of crofting rigs heading down to the sea, something I saw (but wasn't able to sketch) up near Durness.  However, when I started to make a drawing it came out a bit differently. Cliffs emerged!  I think I've seen so many cliffs over the last week that this image is lodged in my brain.

As a composition I thought this might work. In particular, I thought there was a motif here - a repeating A-shape - which I wanted to explore. So I drew it out on a larger piece of paper.

So far so good.  What about palette?  I thought green should predominate, so selected an olive green acrylic to start with. Also using diluted black ink.

 Then I added some crimson allizarin to the mix, but I was a bit tentative. I was being particularly restrained about the sea and the sky. And I was troubled about the position of the abandoned cottage on the middle left.

I worked away in pencil and paint, adding ultramarine and yellow ochre to the mix. But then I thought it wasn't working so I worked it all over in white gesso to knock it back a bit.

It was still looking a bit crude, I thought, and I continued to work on it.  I clearly got more absorbed by the picture as I forgot to take another photo until I got to this much more advanced stage.

And at this point I stopped!  Kind of interesting. Another one for review next week.

A Fresh Start

It's been a while since I posted a blog, but now that I'm back from a week's holiday in Caithness and Sutherland I'm raring to go with creating some new work. My aim over the next month is to get some serious uninterrupted work done. I just need to paint paint paint!

I've made a start over the last couple of days - been reviewing my sketches and supplementing ideas by looking at photographs - and I feel that I've made a good start. I find it quite difficult getting back to painting after a bit of a break.

Yesterday I was roughing out some harbour compositions, based on Kiess and Sandside Harbours in Caithness, searching for an interesting composition.

Today (with some difficulty) I selected a couple of the Sandside compositions and had a go at doing these at a larger scale using ink, white acrylic paint and a little crayon. I got as far as this and decided to stop.  I was determined to get something down on paper.

Determined not to overwork these, I set them aside and decided to focus on a view which had caught my interest - the strand and the limekiln at Loch Eribol.  My starting point was a quick graphite sketch I did yesterday.

On a large piece of paper I re-drew the scene in black ink and graphite. I was really liking making the random ink marks on the beach. However, one can't be too precious at this stage of making a picture and so I continued.

Using a combination of two acrylic paint colours (plus white) plus inktense pencils, I got as far as this next stage. I was liking the way I did the sea - a lot less fussy than usual.  But when I reviewed the picture, I thought some of the marks on the beach were distorting perspective.

So I did a bit more and it ended up like this.

Not finished yet.  But all in all quite a good start, I think.
Back to the drawing board tomorrow.  Discipline!