Tahoe & Mt.Tallac Watercolour

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So I had the somewhat rare desire to use watercolours today (yes, I know how to spell) It was quite liberating - no thinners, oils, rags and mess - just water and a little Cotman set which fits right in your hand like a mini palette. Oil painting seems to involve such an entourage of stuff. Maybe it's just the way I like working that doesn't lend itself to portability. It's OK, I like my studio. So I set myself up rather easily by the window today and produced this little painting.

Towards Mount Tallac

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You know how frustrating it is when you see the most amazing thing and reach for your camera and...damnit! I forgot it, again! Well I've been having a lot of those moments recently, especially because the light is so atmospheric right now. This little oil is part memory and part photograph because of just that. I don't really mind though, visualisation and memory are powerful tools, and I think some intuitive 'interpretation' of a landscape is a good thing - I think it enriches the painting with more character than a literal translation of 'reality' onto the canvas.

Three Foot Icicles

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This oil study is part of the view from our cabin in Tahoe - and in fact includes part of our cabin! The icicles are amazing - coming from the UK where the climate is much more mild, I've never really seen them. They're pretty commonplace here now, as the temperatures are getting as low as 7 degrees (-13 Celsius) Brr! The forest service has also been doing a lot of prescribed burns the past few days, so the air has been a little yellowy-brown in the distance.

Tahoe Trees & Rocks

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Well, painting in the window was a mixed success. Just like painting outside, you have to deal with changing light and sometimes blinding glare on the painting. The changing light is actually really cool - it makes me work quicker and keeps things fresh. The glare is something else - I have managed after much ado to arrange my studio lights so that they don't reflect on the oily paint surface too much, with diffusers, full spectrum bulbs and clamp lights. It's not too bad if the painting is small, but on larger pieces it's a real issue.

Working in the window today was almost impossible - the sun was reflecting against the snow and right into my painting, so I couldn't accurately read the colours. I found that taking it off the easel and working on it in my hand was easier - I think this might be the way forward for these little pieces.

The view is a small section of the hillside opposite us. There are loads of tempting looking granite boulders over there, which have on close inspection proven to be crumbly and unclimbable - bah! I tried to keep this painting quite loose, and look at the more abstract design of the landscape. The snow throws the rocks and trees into sharp relief, creating perpendicular movement with the added excitement of diagonals in the steep hillside. I'm going to try a bigger version of this piece - I think it's worth experimenting with and developing further.

Snowy Tahoe

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This little oil study is part of the view from our cabin in Tahoe. We had a huge dump of snow a couple of days ago and it has transformed the view dramatically. It was like Christmas waking up to the sparkly white vista - the trees limbs weighed down under the heavy snow and the mountains across the lake suddenly delineated by contrasting ridges and gullies. Visibility was really bad yesterday, so we couldn't really see so much of the view - but today the sun came out and the landscape just opened right up again. I've stationed my easel in the window now for the next few days, so I can try to capture the vista at different times of day. We get some of the most incredible sunrises and sunsets here, which as a subject for painting I often steer clear of for fear of the dreaded 'cheese', but I'm going to tackle it in earnest if I can.

Shell's shells

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Good morning! It's snow-time at last in Tahoe, so we're off snowboarding as soon as we've had our Pain au Chocolat - no time for navel-gazing today!

Seashell no.5

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I've been experimenting with glazing recently, and it's something I've ended up doing almost accidentally in the past, not really understanding the processes but liking the end results. I work intuitively, quickly and sponataneously, which is great for keeping a lot of energy in your work but sometimes good technique goes out of the window. Working on these tiny oils is giving me the chance to evaluate technique on a daily basis, and I'm reading more about materials and other people's ways of working. I can be really impatient with drying times, so glazing isn't always a practical consideration for me - you can't glaze over sopping wet paint, it just gets muddy. I've been building up texture, letting it dry (happens very quickly here in Tahoe) and then applying a thin colour over the top. It's cool the way it catches in the grooves of the underpainting, and you can warm up or cool down a section if it's not quite right. I'm working on some bigger oils of figures at the moment, and the light effects are crucial to the theme of the painting. I'm learning as I go about how to create luminosity, depth and form with glazes. Art is all about learning, you never stop learning....