Snow Shots

The recent photo-dump of a local church I posted a few entries back was meant to be a one off, but as most of my digital plein-air output for St. Peter's, which was on a USb stick, has been lost to the outer plane of small household objects; I have, in turn, lost the context that the photographs were meant to represent. So I figure why not post some more photos. I don't really have much to lose at this point.

 Note: The last photo was previously the subject of a little DS painting I did last Autumn. It's rather interesting to revisit the same subject under different conditions - and in this case, different formats. See here for the post that contains my original exploration of the subject.

 As previously, I can only state I have little interest in photography beyond just recording sights to add to my reference folders.

Old Gods

A slight change of plan. I wanted to continue with my St. Peters church explorations from last year, but my scanner has died. I've ordered a new one, but in the mean time here's another speedie...

 

DS Snowscapes

Four DS landscapes done during a recent batch of snow.

Y Garn

Another Welsh landscape that started life as a quick plein-air laptop study. Probably the last one I'll go back to, although I might post the rest of the thumbnails from last years sessions as a form of closure.

Environments

Erebus

Mountain Village

Speedpaint for a weekly environment challenge. Excuse the dodgy lhamas. :)

Greytooth

Winter Wood

Seasonal speedpaints will abound, me thinks. I guess I'm returning to my Winter Spirits theme I played around with at the beginning of the year. This one's me being a very mucky pup' and just scribbling like mad. I'll make a point of spending more time on the next one. :)

Frozen Lake

The weather is starting to warm up and the sun is showing it's face more often, so I had better get a few more wintery paintings done while the memories are sill fresh.

Sentinel

Another winter speedie.

Winter Spirits

While tradition seems to indicate I should be looking to the future and what this new year may bring, I can't seem to shake the nostalgic feeling I have today. And while I am indeed looking forward to the warmer months ahead, I'm also trying to squeeze in a little ghost story session before I go back to work. I missed out on the traditional Christmas Eve slot so I decided to dig out an old anthology of victorian ghost stories to curl up in bed with later on.

Sorting through my christmas cards ready for recycling, I noticed a distinct lack of those beautiful old winter scenes that look rather bleak and brooding when compared to the current trend of chirpy little robins, cuddly bearded men and bright sparkly things - usually with some kind of humorous undertone. There's nothing wrong with these things, and I can see why people would rather send more overtly 'happy' cards, but I didn't even receive one of those quaint victorian scenes of figures skating on a frozen lake while a horse drawn coach passes by. At least meet me half way, guys. You're supposed to be my friends! :-D

I know that in many art circles these picture postcard paintings are frowned upon in much the same way as the work of Constable is undermined by sticking The Hay Wain on every other biscuit tin. But I rather like the bleaker ones - particularly when I received a card a few years ago that had the same painting on the cover as a book of M.R. James ghost stories I have. Classy.

So while I was thinking about the amalgamation of christmas cards and the tradition of ghost stories I decided to knock up an example of the sort of christmas card I would like to receive in future (take note relatives & friends). I might do a few more of these before I snuggle up in bed with my book.

Speedpainting In Blue

Although I started this blog as a way to motivate me into bumping up my drawing/sketching output, I still consider the act of 'speedpainting' to be a form of sketching. The only difference being that it (usually) involves colour. Both sketching and speedpainting are, to me, all about capturing something within a short amount of time - be it a feeling, an idea, a pictoral diary entry of certain events or notions that happen to be swimming around my brain during a particular day.

In this case it was the fact that it is very cold outside today. And even though the sun is shinning, I could still feel the chill on my exposed face. The sensation was not all together unpleasant, but I started to feel cheated becouse of all the drab gray concrete around me. If I am going to feel cold, then why not go to extremes and get some of those wonderful arctic blues.