Harbourside stage 4

Worked on Harbourside yesterday, and also played around with a few techniques and materials on some heavy watercolour paper.  

This painting is at the slightly ugly stage, but I know it will be fine, it just needs more work, but it's one of those paintings which I need to keep looking at throughout the day to see where to go next.  Some paintings seem to paint themselves and others, like this one, seem to resist being finished.

Harbourside, stage 4

I like how the quay side is coming, it just needs the finer details putting in such as window frames and chimney pots, plus railings, signs etc.  The boats need a lot more detail as they are in the foreground.  Hopefully I will get it near to finished tomorrow.  I don't like the two boats in the background facing the same way, so one will have to up anchor and turn around.

Harbourside stage 3

I'm not sure if this is stage 3 or stage 4, but it's the next stage anyway.  I have added the buildings, copies from my sketchbook.  I couldn't get my printer to print them on the rather thick watercolour paper I have, so I printed them on some medium thick card.  I decided not to make them large and prominent, which had been my first thoughts.  Because the prints looked so good, I made the images a little smaller and got lots more on.  It reminds me of East Looe where the town down goes down the side of the estuary to the harbour, and I think one of the drawings was done there, but as in most of my 'harbour' pictures, it isn't anywhere really.

Harbourside, stage 3

I also added the boats in various collage papers.  It is all a little rough at the moment, but I love working from chaos to resolved painting.  I need to add more smaller boats in the background to give distance, and paint the houses a little, but not so much that I lose the graphic, drawing quality.  I don't usually have distance in my paintings, but this has happened all by itself, and I try and go with what the painting is saying to me.

I had a lovely day out yesterday, although I feel shattered today.  Diane Leach and I went to The Dutch House Gallery, nr Crayke, north of York  to see the work of Lesley Birch.  It was a fabulous exhibition although we didn't realise that it was preview afternoon, so very busy. I hate going to previews as people stand chatting IN FRONT of the work. There was also a very good ceramicist whose name I didn't write down sadly.  Her pots were wonderful.  We had lunch there and it was lovely and the cafe was full of art too.

We then went over to the Lund gallery at Alne, just the other side of the A19, and found that it was North Yorkshire open studio, and there were three artists there - all with fabulous work.  As it was Open Studio, we looked in the booklet and found another open studio on the way home, that also had three artists, held in a beautiful Victorian (?) racing stable.  I came home with my head absolutely crammed full of the imagery of over a dozen artists and some fantastic scenery, but went to bed at 9pm absolutely shattered.