Big and Bold

 A five day holiday in Shropshire, Wales and Cheshire gave us some much needed chilling time. We also walked along mountain rivers, up a Hill Fort, alongside canals, over and under the Ironbridge and over a very high canal Aquaduct. I did no sketching but soaked in all of the views and atmosphere as inspiration.

As we made our way along the motorway we drove under black clouds heading towards blue skies and, true enough, when we arrived at our first stop in Much Wenlock the sun shone on us for the first time in weeks and continued to shine with the exception of a 2 hour cloudburst one evening which we dozed through in the comfort of our little tent.

On our return my classes started with the Working Large workshop at Arlington Art Group - having taken a million and one photos on holiday I had some great reference material and chose a view of a stream along the Llanberris Pass with some large hills and the background. We sketched loosely and quickly with acrylic and big brushes onto A1 paper or card then gradually added in more colour and detail either with paint or chalk/oil pastels. The picture below is half way there, about an hour's work to do I reckon.

My next class was Vorticists - Black and White designs, and I had a great time researching all of the artists of the period, creating boards on Pinterest  and printing out reference sheets. The 'students' started by copying part of one of the images to see how it was constructed then created their own design using elements from various reference photos in black ink with pen and brushes. They had to be quite brave filling in large areas of black without planning in advance what the final piece was going to look like. The mood and balance of the pieces changed constantly. The final results were all very different, interesting, bold and were a complete break away from the normal way the artisits each usually work. It inspired me to do more of this work - these fish images were my initial response to the Vorticist exhibition at the Tate last year.