My classes will not be opening till next September, though we are having three full day outdoor painting and sketching meetings in May and June. At the same time, two other pieces of work unrelated to painting are at an end and …….. Hazel Soan has a new DVD and book on Watercolour which will need careful study. She is so inspiring, and I have just introduced her to a new painter friend. All these circumstances have arrived together just as I am beginning to see things I want to paint. I hope and trust the block is lifting.
Here are two efforts which are the first results of the above, both overworked, and therefore under-thought, but I can see my painting brain awakening as I progressed from one to two. The most that can be said for the first one is that I had a go and enjoyed it. The drawing of the gate is Wrong, no perspective and the flaming bush has grown in size and dominance. I like the high light on the slender tree. The drawing in Two is better, so there is a progression into the painting, the bush is bright, smaller and less shouty. There is more interest in the tree trunk is the foreground, but I think gate one is better than gate two.
I don’t think I had previously made the connection between overworked and underthought, but the truth of it hit me immediately. So often when something has gone wrong and ended up muddy and clumsy I can identify the moment when I carried on regardless when I should have stopped and Thought!