Category Archives: Abstract foregrounds

David Bellamy – Substituting detail in a landscape painting

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Sketching in a kayak smI’ve been cramming quite a number of adventures in lately (most of them involving a thorough wetting!), leaving me precious little time to blog, and there’s so many more lined up it’s going to be difficult keeping up any narrative. A couple of weeks ago I kayaked down the Wye with my daughter Catherine and her partner Nicko, and  she took this shot of me sketching in calm water. The scowl, if you can see it, is obligatory when sketching if you need clear concentration – lose your paddle and all you have to operate the craft with is a number ten round sable……. It was a marvellous day out, in glorious sunshine.
One of the problems we have as artists painting in the landscape, is the need sometimes to fill a gap – perhaps to replace a rather boring or unpleasant object. In this painting of a scene in the Brecon Beacons I have added in a clothes- line on the left of the building to replace some unremarkable bushes. This is an excellent way of adding interest and colour to a farm or cottage. The horse was actually there and didn’t need any changing at all.

The actual painting is in the Ardent Gallery in the centre of Brecon, together with several other of my watercolours – telephone 01874 610710

David Bellamy – Foreground techniques in watercolour

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Foregrounds can often be a pain in the neck, and are often not considered properly until the rest of the painting has been completed. This is not good practice, of course, as it’s by far a lot better to give the foreground some thought before you start painting. Anything but the simplest of landscapes will benefit from one or two studio thumbnail sketches to help you decide on the main features and relationships of the composition.

Foregrounds vary considerably, and sometimes completely different types of foreground may well suit a scene. Having a lead-in to the focal point can be very effective, and in this watercolour of cottages on Skye the track undulates and wriggles, losing itself in places until it disappears completely round the right-hand side of the buildings. A lead-in doesn’t have to be continuous, and there are times when it helps to be less conspicuous. The warm colours in the foreground here counter the cool ones in the distance, accentuating the sense of space, although I have mashed some strong blues into the foreground vegetation with a spatula in places to create interest. I used the edge of a piece of card to apply the paint here and there – this introduces a change of style from the brushwork, tending towards the abstract. Drystone walls, posts and boulders can be useful for breaking up masses of vegetation. Experiment with all sorts of objects with which to apply the paint if you’d like to try something new.

On a hike recently I wanted to find a spot where the river created a really good lead-in to a mountain, but there was no path. The dense vegetation simply got worse as I battled upstream (without a machete – they don’t like you carrying them around these days, and my Swiss Army knife wasn’t quite up to the job). If, rather than fight it, you wish to paint such dense vegetation, then the semi-abstract system as in the bottom left of this painting, can be the best option. Enjoy your painting/hacking!