Painting at Pin Mill 4

In a previous blog (August 10th) I demonstrated my methods for painting a gouache landscape en plein air. The subject was Pin Mill on the Suffolk Coast. Unfortunately, as I explained, “good light” stopped play.
To recap:

The start of the painting.

Stage two. At this point the painting had to be abandoned due to rain and wind!

Fortunately, I have since returned for another few hours to work on the painting and then complete it in the studio.

The finished painting.

Detail of finished painting.

As will be seen, a great deal of work has been done on the barges etc and on the water where I was hoping to capture the play of light and the patterns of reflections. At times I used hogs hair brushes, at others, softer synthetic ones which allowed me to blend much more easily. At the end I was using tiny sable brushes, to do areas such as the rigging.

As I said in my previous blog, working en plein air can be both exhilarating and challenging. If you haven’t already tried it , have a go!

Painting a landscape in gouache 1

Gouache is one of my favourite mediums, particularly for painting out of doors. It dries rapidly, yet is still water soluble if you wish to go back into it and make alterations. It has a soft chalky quality about it , French chalk having been added to the pigments in their production.
As a result , it is a very forgiving medium allowing one to proceed with the minimum of planning, to easily make amendments and to paint light over dark.
In this particular painting I am working on Bockingford watercolour board and using Winsor and Newton designers gouache.

With a large hog’s hair brush I have very rapidly blocked in the general composition, the sweep of the river, the distant hills and indicated the position of the trees in the foreground. It has taken around 30 minutes for this initial stage of the painting.