4 little post card sized gouaches to limber up ready for a larger painting. Its been difficult to motivate myself with the distress of Covid, Russia invading Ukraine and my elder sister being so ill but I need to get painting again. My husband motivated me to paint Glanum in the Spring but I have done little since. That painting in on our wall  and I enjoy seeing it so its time for another. I think I will paint the Poole park one next in acrylic, I have given up painting La Rochelle in oil and it is obliterated now with a coat of blue oil paint, it may become a sea scape eventually. Here it is in an unfinished state before I stopped, I think I got fed up with comments about it and just got bored as there were lots of boats and masts to paint.

Another painting of Horsey Windmill in watercolour with body colour. I prefer this one.

French Fields Watercolour background and gouache foreground.

Had fun painting "french fields" in watercolour for the bright background working light to dark in a traditional watercolour manner and then painting the foreground dark to light like you would an oil painting but using gouache which is basically opaque watercolour. A few sections of this painting could be compositions in their own right.

For the background I used Gaston Balande's work "view of the village of lauzières with the house of balande" recently sold at auction in France. I printed it out, its an oil shown below and on my work in progress.

Fish Market in Venice

I have joined the Society for All Artists (Saa) to challenge myself as I often lack direction but want to paint. I am going to take part in their competitions and online workshops. Here is one that I took part in today but did my own thing as they were doing watercolours and I tend to paint dark to light like an oil painter which means I tend to stray to the gouache when doing watercolours and work from dark to light. I like strong colours too! I started in a watercolour way then used watercolour pencils then gouache then finally I vanrnished.

Final work before removing the tape and below is the reference photo provided by Saa

A watercolour painted on shiny card primed with absorbent ground

I coated a piece of shiny cereal packet card with several coats of absorbent ground to see if it would take watercolour paint well. I painted a view of Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. I was able to create texture effects in the ground prior to paintng which was an interesting idea.

Here's the video

Gaston Balande

 I was in France last month and saw a news item on Gaston Balande, a French painter from the time of Impressionism, Post Impressionism and Fauvism. He painted over 4000 works, many are scenes from the Saintonge. Its worth googling his name to see all the different styles he painted in. His work made me feel happy and this was very welcome at that time. Anyway, I just had to copy a few to see if I could get the feel and colour of them, although I didn't always keep faithfully to the original. I was working on my knee in front of a wood fire, trying to keep warm, (awful weather in France about same time Sandy was bashing New York) so oils were out of the question as I get in such a mess, I used gouache instead. I hope you enjoy them. 

Heres a link to his work ...

http://www.gaston-balande.com/diaporama-gaston-balande.html

Towers and Lighthouses

Going through my portfolio I noticed a common theme. I think I must like towers. They make good strong verticals in a composition. Here are a few in different mediums.

Collioure... 2 Acrylics

 The Pepperpot in  Upton on Severn. 2 gouaches of a night time scene

An exercise in pastel and pointillism