David Bellamy – Painting an tranquil evening sky

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 I’ve just delivered some paintings to the Attic Gallery in Swansea’s Maritime Quarter for a mixed show running until 26th March, and there are some excellent works on display. You will find the gallery at 37 Pocketts Wharf, SA1 3XL and the telephone number is 01792 653387. My mainly Pembrokeshire scenes includes one of my favourite locations of East Angle Bay.

This watercolour shows a tranquil winter evening with Angle church forming the centre of interest. I’ve kept the main design in harmony with the emphasis on horizontals on the creek, the lie of the land and with the clouds. In the sky the Aussie red gold also has a horizontal bias and is deliberately strong around the lightest part of the sky to heighten the glow. Positioning the church with the creek leading towards it, and the reflected light on the water brings it all together and it is important to ensure that all these varied elements support one another in this way. Sometimes nature needs a little tweaking to produce a good composition. 

 If you are planning on exploring more of the UK rather than travelling abroad this year you may well find the Great British Wildlife & Environment Map of great help. It features over 1,500 wildlife hotspots, eco events, conservation projects and days out in the natural environment, places where it holds interest for those artists who love to get out amidst nature and perhaps sit quietly to observe wildlife. It has an amazing amount of detail on both sides and is produced by marvellousmaps.com

David Bellamy – Painting Snow Scenes

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 Well, at this time of year we’re supposed to see some snow, but the only time I’ve come across the white stuff this winter is on the high mountains, so last week I did encounter brilliant snow effects in the Brecon Beacons, accompanied by the most divine light flooding the western face of Cribin. Alas, I’d left my paintbox in my Viper haversack and the resulting sketch done with watersoluble pencil failed to capture the amazing colours, and I was too high up to make a quick dash for the car.

 So here I will show you a pen and wash sketch I did of New Radnor church many years ago in beautiful snow conditions.   

This was done in an A4 cartridge book with limited colours. Everything is cool, except the yellow ochre on the buildings. In a painting I would simplify the scene, as the cottages compete with the church, which is the main centre of attention. I’d probably put these cottages into shadow, making them quite dark to throw the emphasis on the church caught in strong sunlight.   

Christmas was a happy, but wild affair of tearing round Kent, Sussex and Hampshire to see various members of the family. Still, I was able to relax at times with a riveting novel set in the French Alps around Chamonix, Running Water & The Guide, by A E W Mason, himself an Alpinist active in the early 20th century. It has been brought to life again by Professor Roberta Grandi with an excellent scholarly introduction and notes on Mason’s life and career. I thoroughly enjoyed the plot and recommend it whole-heartedly. The cover shows my watercolour of the Brenva Ridge and the misty slopes of Mont Blanc. It’s available on Amazon.

The sun is beckoning me out, so I will leave you with the hope that 2022 will be a great year for you all, after all the problems of Covid, and I wish you much happy painting!

David Bellamy – Frolicking in the Desert

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Most of this year I’ve been painting subjects from the Middle East, a part of the world I’ve been fascinated by since I first visited in 1963, and these works will illustrate my forthcoming book, Arabian Light, due to be published by Search Press in May 2022. The subjects cover a wide variety of scenery, buildings, figures, interiors and many others, and for a taster I show below a painting of our expedition guides dancing in the desert hundreds of miles from the nearest village. For the intense darkness I’ve used the Daniel Smith Lunar black slightly mixed with French ultramarine. The granulation strength of this colour is truly mindblowing! There’ll be more on this in future blogs.

 Another book I’m pleased to be associated with is Green Parrots in my Garden, a book of poems from the Arab Middle East by Jane Ross, a Canadian poet who has lived in the Middle East amidst threats of war, but concerns herself more with the warmth of human relationships, the wisdom of ancient desert values and the beauties of artefact and design that bring her into the hearts of the people and the essence of the region. She writes of the oasis of Wadi Bani Khalid where ‘the winds are gentle zephyrs in the thick warm air,’

      ‘But ontop of Jebel Shyams the winds are sharp and piercing,
      like needles thrusting their way through the blanket;
      fiendish, dervish, absolute and wild.’

Yes, that mountain presented so many exciting images that I forgot myself in a fiery sunset, when the light vanished so suddenly that without a torch I found myself trying to pick up all my scattered brushes and pencils in the dark then navigate across a rock-strewn plateau on the edge of a canyon. 

The books features two of my paintings in monochrome, and  Jane’s website is www.janeross.ca

It will be available on Amazon via this link.

 I wish you all a very and peaceful Happy Christmas. May you have many lovely artful arty presents, and thanks for your patience in my extremely slow blog production rate in 2021

David Bellamy – Painting limestone scenery in watercolour

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I’ve managed a pretty wild and wonderful autumn this year, though it has left me breathlessly out of kilter on the blog-writing front, I’m afraid. How I wish there was more time for writing, which I love, but sadly in this robotic world there are so many threats to writers and their writing-time. For eample, in New Zealand their libraries archive has intended to put thousands of books’ contents onto the internet, but it seems that after world-wide protests they’ve just realised there’s a thing called copyright involved!

 We’ve been blessed with a gorgeous little grand-daughter by the name of Beatrix, and look forward to meeting her on the run-up to Christmas. Her Dad’s going to be performing in pantomime at Margate, so it’s going to be a bit riotous, Covid-permitting, of course.

 This is a watercolour sketch of Gordale Scar in Yorkshire, carried out on a beautiful calm, sunny afternoon in October while sitting in a most uncomfortable position on extremely steep ground high above the valley. The light falling on the limestone really made the rock stand out, particularly against the shadowy parts. It is deliberately overworked so that I have all the details to produce a large studio watercolour, and my awkward position didn’t help. This is actually only the right-hand half of the composition and the cartridge paper has been left unpainted where the sunlight is hitting the limestone. 
   
There is too much green for my liking, but grass growing on limestone has that intense colour, and I wanted to record a faithful rendering. In a studio painting I will doubtless take more liberties, lose a lot of hard edges and make other adjustments, but my point here really is to show how working out of doors like this is to me not just a means of acquiring the information for a finished painting, but also of observing how the traditional approach will appear, so that I can see where I need to be more creative in the later attempt.

The Covid-induced layoff has been a real nuisance, but we are now organising courses for 2022 as you will find on my website .  There is one in Mid-Wales in April, and another in Cornwall in September, both popular locations with lots of interesting subjects. I may well be adding more in due course. Also on the website you will find information on my books, the last one published being the Landscapes Through the Seasons in Watercolour, and they are all available via the website

I hope you are managing to get out and about with your sketching and painting gear – even in December we can get some lovely days, and the low light can create some fabulous cast shadows.

David Bellamy – Creating Autumn Still Lifes

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Wandering through the woodlands at this time is a real pleasure for the artist, with the great variety of warm colours as the leaves turn. I can’t resist picking up a handful of leaves and taking them back to the studio to play with. There’s nothing like the process of experimenting with artistic ideas for stimulating our work, even if you have tried the particular process before.

    A branch of leaves – or perhaps I should say, a twig of leaves in case we get too carried away – can make a superlative still life subject, but here I have pushed the leaves into thick watercolour paint straight out of the tube, applying a few different colours for each leaf before placing them on the paper. With a sheet of tissue paper over the leaf I then rub it with fingers to create the image. It can be hit or miss, but when it works the result can be inspiring. You can work in two or three leaf images in this way and perhaps add some spatter and further detail, lettering, collage or whatever. The addition of a little thickener such as Winsor & Newton’s Aquapasta may help improve your results.

    You can get ideas on painting autumn scenes in my Landscapes Through the Seasons book, available through my website  

    We are now planning painting courses for 2022, and details of these should be released before long. At the moment I’m spending a lot of the time away from the studio, so these blogs have been in short supply. Anyway, enjoy your autumn painting and do have a go at recording those stunning leaf shapes in one form or another!