Art Society of Inverness

Earlier in the summer I joined the Art Society of Inverness and attended 2 classes before their summer break. The first time I went along I felt very much like a fish out of water... At the Church where its held there was a flurry of activity as people were bringing in box after box of equipment, easels, giant canvases, wearing aprons.... and I had a small sketch pad, 6 pencils and an eraser!

The group/people were very welcoming, its just that it was an alien environment for me and I have/had no idea how to draw or paint. 

Another montage/mix up... not quite right, but I like the sky(again)

The structure is really good, its run by Jonathan Shearer a full time artist. You basically take your own work (any medium), and at the start of each class he does a demo on a particular aspect, you then get on with your work and he comes around the class giving advice and tips.

Jonathan is very perceptive and quickly picked out my weaknesses, but also my style, or at least what I want to try and achieve with water colour painting. He suggested I try and copy some James Morrison landscape paintings (oil) to try and improve my technique, which I have been doing. 

I admit I have fallen in love with the work of James Morrison, who I hadn't heard of before. His paintings have amazing realism, and power to the scene, particularly focusing on dramatic skies above the sea, or other landscape. I'm drawn to his magical skies.

Jonathan got me working on my colour mixing - creating a swatch almost 

This week (I think my 3rd week) Jonathan talked about getting sketches and reference material before you complete a painting or piece of work. He also talked about the negatives of trying to just copy/paint from a 2 dimensional photo, or image and how so much detail is missing - fascinating to learn all of this.

So with this in mind I have tried this technique. I want to paint a local scene of the fields and sky near the house now the crop has been baled. The light/sky was brilliant the other night so I rushed out and took some pictures and tried to complete a quick sketch (bottom middle - the rubbish one) to get some sense of colours/tone. I struggled to capture much as the sky and light changed/went within 1 minute. The other 2 sketches I'm worked on indoors to work out how I will tackle the bales, and trees in the distance that were very dark/in shadow.