A Little Bit of Skye

A Little Bit of Skye

Oil on board  20 x 24'

Bridget Hunter 2012

Still trying out the new blue ( Windsor Blue, green shade ) and finding it makes some very intriguing mixes with Cadmium Red or Yellow Ochre or a warmer blue, or combinations of a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I work with a limited palette of 7 colours anyway so it's been an adventure into the unknown.

 This oil is based on a sketch done when I spent a week in Skye last year and, like this May, it rained !

A Greener Shade of Blue

Lights and Darks at Culzean

Oil on board   20 x 24"

Bridget Hunter 2012

I've painted the small pond at Culzean before but recently went sketching there again and used the sketch as a resource for this painting. It's very much based on a new colour I bought - Windsor Blue ( green shade) which is very strong and needs scouring powder to remove from the  hands !! It's always the same with a new colour though- the need to use it to prove you've not wasted your money.

Watercolour in sketchbook

Paisley Art Institute

Paisley Art Institute

The Annual Exhibition starts on Saturday 6th May and is well worth a visit.

I am delighted to have a painting included this year.

November at Borrowdale

Oil on board  28x24"

Untitled in Greens

Untitled in Greens

Oil on board  20x20"

Bridget Hunter 2012

A painting from a photo taken last year at Culzean.  I've changed it from landscape to square format because, being a bit "Scroogelike", I had a frame that size and shape from another painting and wanted to use it. No real artistic reason then -  more a case of needs must !!

I'm at a loss as to thoughts for a title. It's a view of a field at Culzean at a time when lush greens, due to our sometimes wet climate, were everywhere. 

There is no gold in the painting and I don't know why it appears as if there is. 

My photo used as a reference.

Sketchbook Blog

It's been a long while since I bothered with my other Blog  'Bridget Hunter's Sketchbooks' ,  about a year probably, since most of my sketches are really done as resources for paintings and full of scribbles and notes or studies. But I've been a bit inspired lately by some of the wonderful Sketching Blogs around and how the sketches are finished works in themselves.

So I've decided to have a go again at proper -grown- up- sketching for the pure pleasure of drawing, and posting these more often should the results be 'blogworthy' !

Hence, a new blog banner.

I'd like to have a new more interesting blog title but at the moment I just can't think of anything. Any ideas welcome !!!

Sketching Kit

Acrylic Sketching at Ardnamurchan

Path to the Loch

Oil on board  24 x 20"

Bridget Hunter 2012

Another painting started from a pencil sketch then worked up at home. I seem to have been painting very dark skies but sometimes the sky does go dark and the land seems to glow beneath it. We've had a very warm and dry 2 weeks - unbelievable here at this time of year - and yet today there's a forecast of snow. Last week flip flops, this week boots again. "Only in Scotland" people are muttering!

Working from a Photo

The Small Pond Culzean

Oil on board  24 x 20"

Bridget Hunter 2012

I've been searching through sketchbooks and photos for a painting subject and found this one taken on a walk at Culzean Castle. I've always wanted to paint the shadows and reflections there but thought it might prove too tricky to get it right.

First a few thumbnail sketches to decide on the composition.

Then the exciting part - blocking in the main shapes.

 Palette - Ceruleum, Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Rose, White.

After that it all went downhill as the struggle with the foreground meant I kept wiping paint off and adjusting the plants and resorting to lots of coffee breaks and getting totally scunnered with it !

In the end the large mass of pale plants at the bottom disappeared as it seemed to work better with a darker area there. Then it seemed best to darken the tones of the left side to emphasis the light areas at the end of the path. It now sits facing the wall so I'm not tempted to do anymore and so overwork it.

However, I love the work of Ivon Hitchens and would love to be able to reduce the scene as he does in this painting.

Drooping Trees over Water
Ivon Hitchens  1957

A Postcard to Cathy in South Africa

Acrylic on thick watercolour paper

This is another postcard from me to Cathy in South Africa. It's supposed to be a card from a walk - the exercise part. But having been a bit housebound at that time, I used my back garden as a resource with the winter stalks and frosted leaves but also with the snowdrops just beginning to show.

Loch Doon with a Dark Sky

Oil on board  20 x 24"

Bridget Hunter 2012

I'm not sure if I need a new camera or maybe wait until the paint is dry before trying to take a photo of a painting because, in reality, this is much deeper in tone. I even photographed it outside propped against a north facing wall but the colours look bleached. It might be good to go a get some lessons in photography. Think I've said that before many posts ago !!

Anyway, this is a view of Loch Doon, 17 miles from where I live, a beautiful wild area.

A Bigger Picture

Still Life with the Budgie Mug

Oil on canvas  30 x 26"

Bridget Hunter  2012

I'm still trying to compose still life paintings before I start working, to arrange them and rearrange them and be patient - and its so difficult not to pick up the brush as soon as there's a couple of objects on the tabletop and to get that wonderful feeling of just putting on the lovely buttery initial oil strokes.

This painting though, was a bit easier as I took the objects used in a smaller still life posted here earlier and merely added to it.  But I also wanted something with a bit of character and The Blue Budgie Mug came to mind. It's one of a pair, one with a pink budgie handle and one blue, which date back to 1959 when a friend of my mum and called Auntie Ada by my little brother and I, gave us these instead of chocolate Easter Eggs. I don't know what our reactions were at the time - I hope we looked suitably pleased because I just love them now.

Red Jacket with Cat

Oil on board  10 x 12"

Bridget Hunter  2012

I don't know cats, have never owned a cat. I'm a really a dog fan and always had a dog around the house.
But I'm still inside as its too cold to go sketching landscapes and I'm a bit fed up reworking still lifes. I've been browsing through sketchbooks when I came across sketches of a cat that chooses to live with my relatives in Wales.This could be a bit of a challenge - to try to capture the essence of Smudge, his air of indifference to my drawing him as he dozed on a convenient red jacket. It reminds me of a poem by Eleanor Farjeon
   

Cats sleep anywhere, any table, any chair.

                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Pencil Sketch
Bridget Hunter 2011

Inspired by Figs and Pears

Still Life with Figs

Oil on Board  18 x 14"

Bridget Hunter 2012

Its been a while since I painted or blogged - blame it on lugging large garden pots around and damaging  nerves in the shoulder. I've read a lot instead !  And I've looked at Art Books. And I've been inspired by many images of paintings I've seen, especially a still life by Van Gogh. 

So, I went to the supermarket and bought a pile of pears, a grapefruit or two and a few figs - because of the colours - and then attempted to make some kind of composition. I've ended up with 3 paintings

though two are still at the scraping out and repainting stage, which for me can last quite a while.

This is the smallest of the 3 and when it was nearly finished I added 2 mauve lines, indicative of a pattern on a cloth which I felt the almost circular movement in the painting needed. I also added some strokes of paint to represent a chair back. I'm hoping its now a finished work, though nothing nearly as wonderful as the Van Gogh work which I find so inspirational.

Just look at those onions !

Van Gogh

November Postcard

This is my November Postcard to Martin - How to draw a tree .

"Bridget Hunter sent me a nice card with a tree grove in typical Scottish colors. She critically reflects her latest ambitions in playing golf which at present mainly seems to be an excuse to have coffee and a giggle at the club house after a couple of golf balls have been buried between the tree trunks. She calls that exercise.

I think that it is this tabooless exchange of international customs that contributes a lot to the excitement in this postcard exchange. I am impressed by the quality of the gouache which arrived here in perfect condition. Thanks Bridget and good luck with golfing :)."


This was sent as part of the postcard exchange featured on the Blog - Postcard from my Walk.

Sketching in a train

View from a Train

Gouache on paper  2011

I travelled by train to London in September and spent some of the journey trying to sketch landscapes seen through the window. It was a bit frantic I suppose - trying to remember what I'd just seen and getting it down as quickly as possible in either pencil or watercolour. Luckily I was beside an empty seat!

I've now been working with the sketches as a resource, using gouache on paper, to see if one of them might work as an oil painting.

Alloway Auld Kirk

Spent an Autumn afternoon hunkered down beside the gravestones at Alloway Auld Kirk to sketch this card in Acrylic for Liz in Australia - Liz and Borromini  So glad it arrived safely as a previous card disappeared into the pit of the lost post.

From Postcard from my Walk

"Today I received this amazing postcard from Bridget.

It is of the church in the village of Alloway – the setting for Robert Burn's poem Tam O’Shanter. Although I am in love with Scotland and been there 9 times in the past 12 years, I have only had limited exposure to Burns and did not know this poem at all. Of course I have looked it up now

She prophesied that late or soon,Thou wad be found, deep drown'd in Doon,Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk,By Alloway's auld, haunted kirk.

Just wish I had someone with a lovely thick Scottish accent to read me the whole poem!"
  Liz and Borromini

A lesson learned - hopefully.

Its been all change - rearranged, repainted, trying to get back to why I wanted to paint this. What was the initial inspiration? It was the cloth - the lovely red scattered with the pattern of flowers. 

So that's what I've tried to recapture, taking away the green pattern and lessening the number of colours and simplifyig the objects so hopefully the red will be the main impact.

I've learned one big lesson - try to discipline myself to plan out arrangements, to make a good composition before I even think about lifting a paintbrush.

And also not to blog until I've actually got a painting that's finished and works!!!!

But thankyou for all the helpful comments along the way which have spurred me on rather than to abandon it as a hopeless case.

The rise and fall of a still life!

Lots of changes - replaced the jug for a white one, defined the shadows, raised the horizon and added a knife -felt it needed something different from all those circular elements. And added a half lemon. But  I think its lost the initial rush of excitement, its getting overworked and lost are those first brushstrokes defining the folds in the cloth. I want to go back into it and scruff it up a bit and try to get that feeling back visually of the first bold strokes when all things felt possible. 

David Donalson  "Rosie" 1985

One of the most inspiring exhibitions I've seen recently was "Celebration of a Painter" showing the works of David Donaldson RSA RA RGI LLD  1916 - 1996. This was one of my favourite paintings there. I love how he used reds.

Anne Redpath using red

The Red Cloth in progress

Decisions, descisions. Put paint on, scrape paint off. Gone are the white begonias and in are a few poppies which are miraculously blooming in the garden again - in November! I've kept the plums, now in a white dish, added a grapefruit and some lemons and a couple of favourite things belonging to my grandmother - the tiny coffee cup, because its white, and a toby jug, because it has the same plum colour. The poppies too are descendents of my grandmother's plant. So a bit of a hotchpot still. And its a bit daunting now I've started to blog this but its also keeping me thinking instead of rashly having fun with paint!

But I'm looking at how others used red and found again these two paintings by Scottish painter Anne Redpath 1895 - 1965.

Anne Redpath Spanish Candlestick  1953

Anne Redpath  The Portuguese Cockerel  1962

And maybe I'll be less concerned about what to include after reading Anne's words in Patrick Bourne's book "Redpath"

"They are a mixture, but have all been chosen by me, and therefore they live together, I think, quite happily and, well, they all have memories, too, you see."

Red material in a still life.

Red material circa 1967

Found a piece of red material bought in the 60s when, as a student, I'd made lots of clothes on an old treadle machine! My thoughts now were that it would be wonderful to paint rather than wear, and the only way to do that was to use it in a still life. But arranging a still life is one of those things that drives me to distraction - I'm never happy- and spend ages changing and rearranging, searching through art books hoping the magic of Cezanne and Matisse will somehow transfer to me. Anyway above was my first try. I liked the purple plums against the red, and the white begonias which were similar to the pattern on the cloth.

Oil paints ready.

Cadmium Red, Permanent Rose, Chrome Yellow,Yellow Ochre,Ultramarine Blue, Ceruleum, White.

Making a start

At this initial lay in I'm working very fast and trying out lots of ideas. I'm loving painting the cloth but everything else is a hotchpotch of objects. I mean, just where did the green teapot come from and will it stay?

But tomorrow is another day and for now the paint is too wet to do any more..

November sketch.

November Trees

Bridget Hunter 2011

The sun is shining, the first light frosts are here and the Autumn colours are glorious. So packed my sketching kit, met Dorothy (http://www.dorothyhfisher.com/) and went to Rozelle pond. This is an attempt to capture a small part of the scene in watercolour.

Another of the ten

Still Life with Cherries

Oil on board  8 x 6"

Bridget Hunter 2011

Sold

Another of the ten small paintings for The Whitehouse Gallery.  I used an old painting - posted on blog previously - as the resource for this wee work. I wanted to see what happened if I painted it again on a smaller scale and using the softer brushes once more. The one obvious change is the bowl which went its own road to become white and a different shape entirely. I think there was a bit of "the devil may care" attitude going on here !!

A Small Painting.

Red for Summer

 Oil on board  8 x 6"

Bridget Hunter 2011

I've almost finished 10 small paintings for the Christmas Show " Little Wonderland" at The Whitehouse Gallery, Kirkcudbright. I used watercolour brushes with thinner oil paint this time and enjoyed the way the paint could be applied more fluidly and which allowed more direct drawing with the brush. This is not the usual way for me as I normally love the thick butteriness of the medium. 

A postcard to Katherine

This is the postcard I sent to Katherine 

 (MAKING A MARK) in London. It shows part of the Topiary garden at Chateau Dumas where I recently spent a week with Joan Lawson and her painting school.

Sketching in France.

Have just returned from a painting trip with friends at the Chateau Dumas in south west France. The weather was glorious, the food amazing, the Chateau beautiful, the company wonderful. Here are some pages from my sketchbook done in and around the Chateau.

The Chateau

Hopefully some may end up as painting subjects.