The Treeless Landscape

For someone who loves trees (and loves drawing trees.), I find myself sketching landscapes without trees quite a lot. Many are coastal scenes, but hilly landscapes in this region also tend to have few trees. I suppose it's inevitable in these parts where the original tree cover was largely removed several centuries ago. It's a legacy of our industrial heritage, mostly down to shipbuilding and iron smelting, followed by sheep farming. Nowadays, the remaining shreds of our native woodland are so precious that many of them are protected by law.

Anyway, I love the wild windswept look of treeless landscapes: they motivate me to get down to a bit of sketching, even on a moody day like this.  

 

 I like that elemental feeling that you get from a landscape pared down to its topographical purity, with perhaps the occasional small plantation intruding here and there. However, in compositional terms I can find these landscapes a challenge. The shape of a hill becomes hugely important, as does its dominance within the scene. And the overriding focus becomes colour and texture.

In  spring I embarked on a few larger oil paintings. I love using oils but find them more of a challenge than acrylics, and often get a bit stuck. I was determined to produce a result.

Marsco (on Skye) is a hill with a beautiful angular shape.  We have walked into Glen Sligachan several times and I always have to stop and sketch the view. Glen Sligachan is quite bleak – sandwiched between Marsco and Sgurr Nan Gillean – and perfect to allow the shape of the hill to become the focus of the scene. 

 

I had already painted a couple of acrylic paintings from my sketches, but I was not altogether happy with these. I felt the colour was a little too realistic!

 

 

 

I made a start to an oil painting with some under-painting trying to get a feeling of lightness and that welcoming lure of the hills, and thinking about the marks to use in the treatment of the ground cover.  The first layer ended up like this (below left). 

Then I painted over this layer to get better depth of colour. All the time I was trying to maintain a similar palette and the lightness of colour.  I also tried to improve on the composition by turning the river into a lochan and raising the height of Marsco to allow it to dominate in a more pleasing way. 

So it ended up like this (below right).

 

 

 

 

 

Torridon is another largely treeless landscape.  I find the moorland behind (to the north of) Liathach and Beinn Eighe a great spot. The hills rise directly out of the boggy floor, like ships on the sea. I have sketched Beinn a Chearcaill several times, and painted it in acrylic, like this.

When it came to rendering the scene in oils, I decided to adjust the palette and use more of a geometric approach to the moorland, including the rocks.  Initially I couldn't quite get the look I wanted, and then this misty mysterious look emerged, and that seemed to work. So that's why it has ended up like this. 

However, the presence of such dominant hills takes the eye away from the emptiness of the moorland. I have realised that if I want to paint empty moorland scenes I have to think more about skies. So I have been working a bit harder of portraying clouds and skyscapes.  Then I thought about developing this sketch I did in the Fisherfield area.

Working in acrylics, I realised that the composition (the emptyness) could be enhanced by adding more sky. I had done the sketch on a bright windy day with the clouds scudding across the sky and I sought to capture this in the sky.

These three finished paintings have found their way to a show in the Lemond Gallery, Bearsden (Glasgow)  – the Big Christmas Show 2020. I got them nicely framed locally by Emma Noble in Kyle – she's done a great job. Look at the two oils!

 

Anyway - the work is all online at the Lemond Gallery which is now planning to reopen on Friday 11th to Monday 14^th December for its final session (now that Covid-19 Rules permit!).   If you would like to take a look, here's the link  https://www.lemondgallery.com/

Venetian Reflections

The thing about being away with a group of artists is that there's all sorts of talk about "making something" out of our sketches.  Let's have an exhibition!  The GOOD thing about this is that it keeps focus and momentum going.  Although I'm writing this now, in September - in the run up to our Viva Venezia exhibition - at the time when we got back from Italy, there was no realistic prospect of an exhibition.

But the talk alone was enough to keep me focused. I knew I had to get on with things as I was moving house in July.  I also wanted to work while images and thoughts were fresh in my mind.

In reviewing my sketches (previous blog) I realised that I had homed in to detail a lot.  The beauty of the buildings, the craft of the metal railings, the plasterwork and brick patterns - these details had attracted my attention.  Also the beauty of the decaying buildings, with stucco giving way to old brick, crumbling steps, rotting wooden doorways, the spread of green mould - I loved these colours.  And the typography of street names and house numbers, repeating motifs in plasterwork and in brickwork - I was fascinated by these.  They are all part of the richness of the Venetian cityscape.  I decided that Venice is a city that has become a landscape.

There are so many artists who have made images of Venice that it's hard not to have these images in your head when you go to paint.  There are very few of us who have not fallen in love with the work of artists of the past like Turner, and contemporary watercolour artists such as Angus McEwan - masters of their craft. So the first hurdle to overcome was to try not to think about these.

And sometimes we think too much.  Best really to get on and put things down on paper.  So this one was a start.  I was striving for the Venetian colour palette - a certain shade of red alongside Canal green.

As was this

And this

I was trying to do 'experiments' to see what would emerge - not trying to complete a painting.  I was also thinking about printmaking and what might make a good image for a photopolymer print.  This next motif had been the subject of one of my first sketches on our first day, so I re-drew it in charcoal and pencil.

Maybe the composition was too busy, so when I redrew it in ink ready to make a plate, I rationalised the composition to focus on the canal and the boats.  Something lost and something gained....

I was trying to get a certain dreaminess into the image - taking that canal wateriness as far as I could - but incorporating a few of the details (doors and windows) I had observed too.
The other print I did was also a bit dreamy, but on reflection, perhaps less obviously Venice.

But then, I was not really aiming to be anything that shouted 'Venice' - I was, I suppose, searching for 'Venice beneath the surface' - the older Venice, the timeless Venice, the real Venice ?

I did a bit of reading around the history of Venice to understand more about its development. I read that in early years it had been a successful city state with a benign form of government that recognised the value of its workers and rewarded them accordingly.  Because of its defensive position in the lagoon, it retained a separateness and independence from the rest of Italy as well as being an important and wealthy trading place.  Later it expanded primarily as a place of entertainment, a playground.  That 'film-set' appearance is part and parcel of the 'real' Venice.  I also read articles in the press about the fragility of Venice, how threatened it is by damage caused by cruise ships and how this could be better managed but only if adjacent municipalities would work together. Also another threat emanating from the popularity of Air BandB which is driving full-time residents out of Venice.

So beauty and fragility continue to be two key aspects of Venice.  I rationalised that the canals are the source of the main threat - not just from cruise ships but also from Climate Change - and the beauty lies in the craftmanship and detailing and the organic nature of the city.


These thoughts led me to focus on doorways and watergates.  Rather a roundabout way to get there, perhaps.  But what followed on from this was a realisation that I couldn't do my usual free and easy acrylics, but that I'd need to take a little care over details such as fanlight and window grills in order to convey that beauty.  Hence I decided to use watercolour and ink.

I wanted to do really small paintings - like this study - smaller than A5.....

...but I needed a bit more room to recreate enough of the important detailing.  My pics have ended up roughly A4 in size.  Here's a composite with a selection. I'm not sure if I've achieved what I set out to do.  I would like to continue to develop this work and perhaps even go back for more sketching...time will tell.

And now for the advert...our exhibition is
Viva Venezia
in the Birch Tree Gallery, 23a Dundas Street, Edinburgh
14th to 29th October 2017.  Here are the details

Hope to see you there.  :-)