Category Archives: David Bellamy

Blog Posts by the artist David Bellamy

New Website

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Our new website is now up and running.

Come and explore the new website, we have spent two months working on it and we hope you like the new features and the new look.

There are new galleries of paintings for you to browse through, under David and Jenny’s drop down menus. David has four new collections of paintings for you to enjoy.

The shop has been rebuilt with modern features. There are still one or two issues to sort out but you can shop with confidence in the security of the site. We will be adding more items as they become available.

We have imported your account details from the old site but you will need to create a new password. To do this please visit Our Shop, Click on ‘Log In’ on the top right under the shopping basket, enter your email address and ask for a new password by clicking on ‘Forgot your Password?’ An email will be send to you to confirm that you want a new password. Click on the link in the email and a new password will be sent to you in a second email. You can change this to one you prefer once you are logged in with the password you have been sent, just go to your account and My Personal Information.

I am sorry that this is complicated but the new site would not accept passwords from the old site, nor the order history.

Enjoy browsing the new site. Please let us know if you find any broken links and we will attend to it.

 

Making the most of complementary colours

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Evening light

Evening Light

Most of us have heard of complementary colours, but what are they, and how can we make the most of them in our paintings, whether we paint in watercolour, pastel, oils, acrylics or perhaps a mixture of sand and sheep droppings? Complementary colours are those that stand precisely opposite each other on the colour wheel, such as red and green; blue and orange or yellow and purple. One of the most exciting ways of exploiting this is to juxtapose the complementaries  as shown above.

In this watercolour showing part of the composition the autumn tints of warm yellow and orange come directly up against the warm blue of the background. Being complementary colours they are extremely effective in creating an attractive and dramatic colour relationship. This effect can be accentuated or reduced by intensifying or reducing the colour strength.

Note also that away from the blue background the colours are closer related – analogous colours that will be found within a small segment of the colour wheel. This suggests a calmer feeling, and an interesting foil to the more dramatic juxtapositioning of the complementaries.

This painting is reproduced in my Skies, Light & Atmosphere book, which is aimed at artists who wish to put a little extra into their landscape painting, and you can find details of a special offer in our shop. Our new website is almost ready to run, and we apologise to those of you who have had problems accessing the old one which is starting to creak a little.

Painting complicated mountain scenery

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Canadian Lake

Canadian Lake

Even experienced professionals can get overwhelmed when confronted by the mass of panoramic detail found in the high mountains. Where do you start? What do you leave out – as you can’t possibly put it all in? This is especially a problem in really good visibility, when there is not a cloud in sight. As if this wasn’t enough, some of the most spectacular places are so beautifully composed that it is all done for you, and it is easy to think that all you need do is copy the composition in front of you.

This picture-postcard view is in the Canadian Rockies where we will be going in September. Everything stands out beautifully, but in a painting you need some mystery with part of the motif just hinted at. One device for working out the best composition in front of you is a simple card rectangle with an oblong hole cut out so that you can view the scene you want. Hold it up before your eyes, closing one, and moving the card frame around until you light on the most exciting part of the scene. You may need to move it towards you, or away from you to achieve the optimum size, but this will certainly help you to isolate the scene.

Where ridges pass behind a closer feature you can reduce the detail, perhaps bringing in some cloud or mist at this point, or even a snow squall. In this scene the centre of interest could well be the ‘V’ where the two dark ridges descend in the centre to the lake, but it would be a good idea to push this either to right or left a little, so that it’s not plumb centre. A hint of red or orange there might be a nice touch, and you could also use this in the reflection. The far shoreline cuts right across the picture, a common problem, but easily fixed with some foreground trees or other features.

If you like this type of landscape then why not join Jenny and myself in the Canadian Rockies from 1st to 14th September? I shall be covering all manner of techniques for painting these scenes in watercolour, but painters in other mediums are welcome. The painting holiday is organised by Spencer Scott Travel Telephone +44 (0)1825 714311 or Email:  info@spencerscott.co.uk

Painting Landscapes in Pastel

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Autumn in the Clydach Gorge

Autumn in the Clydach Gorge by Jenny Keal

Although I work in watercolour, I do some painting in other mediums, one of which is pastel. I have neglected it for many years and keep promising myself to do some more, especially when I see what Jenny is producing these days. If you find watercolour difficult, or maybe you are in a rut at the moment, why not try pastels? They make a wonderful change, and you can always return to watercolour later. Many artists find pastel painting so much easier, but some don’t like the dust and mess on their fingers.

Jenny has excellent ways of managing pastel dust and the mess on your fingers, and she is only too willing to show you her methods. She has superb techniques for creating areas of tranquil water with reflections and sparkling highlights. On the right you see one of her paintings of the Clydach Gorge with reflections in deep water. Pastel, with its rich colours, is excellent for autumnal scenes, which can at times be tricky in watercolour, especially when you want to juxtapose light yellow or orange foliage against a darker background. The medium is also much more forgiving – you can alter features fairly easily compared to watercolour. Pastel is also great for fading away the more distant features, as you can see here.

One of my favourite subjects is rocks, and I’ve just seen Jenny’s latest works on rocks, and they certainly have the WOW! factor. Check out Jenny’s blog where she gives free tips, but if you’d really like to give pastels a try why not enroll for her course in Lynmouth from 20th to 23rd May, when she’ll be showing students how to paint the stunning coast and countryside of North Devon?

Painting less for more effect

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Cotswold Cottage

Cotswold Cottage

One of the most thorny problems confronting the painting tutor is putting across the need to eliminate unwanted detail from a subject when the student has already been told to work directly from the subject and produce a careful rendering of the scene. As landscape artists we go out into the countryside to seek out visual material to work from and use as a basis for a composition, yet in order to produce an interesting painting we need to filter out a lot of extraneous detail. I am not interested in producing a photographic response to a scene where everything is laid out meticulously.
In this view of a cottage you will see that certain edges have been lost – there is no defining line for the bottom of either the house wall or the drystone wall, as this approach provides a more painterly response, rather than a photographic one. Also the stones are only described in a minimalistic way. In both these cases the eye of the viewer will subconsciously include these elements. An effective method here is to splash in a different colour in lieu of detail – note the patch of red to the left of centre. This can be a useful device even if the colour you apply does not appear in the scene, as it can both enliven a subject and avoid the need for too much detail.

For these stones I used a number one rigger brush – a very fine instrument with long hairs, ideal for fine work. Where I describe a number of stones in a wall I tend to ease off on the pressure where I want the stones to become lost, but another method I employ is to draw in a few more stones than I actually need, again with the rigger. Whilst these are still wet I then wash over the edge of the painted stones with one of the colours found in the wall, thus losing some of the stones at the edges, and at the same time creating a gradual losing of the detail that can appear more natural. An interesting exercise you can do is to paint the same scene twice: once in extremely strong detail all over the composition, and then again in the manner I’ve described above. By comparing the two results you will learn much about restricting the urge to include everything in a painting.