Author Archives: David Bellamy

The panoramic sketch-book

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When I go off on expedition I like to take a variety of papers – several sketchpads, plus a folder of various papers, some of which are tinted, and with a variety of surfaces. Occasionally I will use a specialist pad, especially when working near home, and an excellent sketchbook that has only recently come on the market is the Derwent Panoramic book. I’ve started using it for certain types of subject, and it has a lovely smooth surface of 165 gsm and can be used for watercolour sketching.

This simple watercolour sketch was carried out as a demonstration on a painting course. The panoramic format is particularly useful for extended mountain ranges and coastlines when a normal sketchbook often means you need to turn over a page halfway across a sketch and add the annotation ‘PTO’ (please turn over), which is hardly satisfactory. With this sketchbook it really makes you think about how you are going to arrange the composition before you start.

Another great bonus is that there is not really much room for over-working those nasty foregrounds that seem to give so many of us problems. It encourages us to play down the detail. If I know there is a chance of my needing a book of this format I stick it in the rucsack. Details can be obtained from the Derwent Pencil Company.

Nude figure drawing in glacial streams

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Drawing from life is the best thing you can do to improve your drawing skills…..after all, if you can render a good likeness of the human figure where all the legs, arms and other paraphernalia should really all go in pretty specific places, then by comparison drawing a tree should be fairly problem-free. You only need to be vaguely accurate with the branches, for example, provided they are actually attached to the tree-trunk!

It is, however, rare that you get the opportunity to do some alfresco nude studies, especially at over 6,000 feet altitude as in this case where the model was bathing in water streaming off the Vignemale glacier! Whilst this has happened to me a few times, this is the only occasion that I’ve had the opportunity to carry out a nude study at such a high altitude.

The main lesson in this is not only that this sort of thing is excellent practice for you (drawing nude figures, I mean, not jumping naked into freezing lakes), but that it always pays to have your sketchbook with you and be prepared for all eventualities. You never know who or what is round the corner! You will find further advice on drawing the figure in my book David Bellamy’s Complete Guide to Watercolour Painting as seen on my website. One final piece of advice: wherever you are always ask permission before sketching or photographing anyone, especially when they are scantily clad or not clad at all.

Suggesting detail in watercolour landscapes

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Last month Watercolour Journey left a comment about my paintings “suggesting a lot of detail without actually cluttering up the painting,” and I wanted to follow this interesting point with an example to help you. Not just to prove that I read your comments, for they are invaluable in providing both feedback and ideas for further posts, even if my response time is rather long, but I was in Switzerland at the time enjoying the fantastic mountain scenery.

This is a small part of a watercolour of a scene in the Cairngorms mountains in Scotland and the point I wish to focus on is the mountainside in the background which I have tried to suggest as rough detail. Unlike the loch and trees, this is not one of the most picturesque aspects of the scene, so I wanted to play it down and not clutter up the area immediately behind the trees, yet still give a sense of place.

At the top of the mountain the detail stands out more strongly where I have deliberately painted in rock and crag shapes, then dragged dry-brush colour down behind the trees. This is an excellent method for suggesting detail without actually painting any in, and it still allows the trees to stand out strongly. Note that the direction of the brush-strokes is designed to enhance the direction of fall of the mountain-slopes. Before I painted in all this suggestion of distant detail I did lay a weak blue wash over the background and let it dry, and you can see it through the broken colour.

To see more of this painting of Loch Pityoulish see my book Painting Mountains & Moorlands in Watercolour and you can order a signed copy from my website.

Dirt, dust and watercolour: paintings of coal mines

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I have always been fascinated by industrial subjects and they make an excellent change from landscapes, especially if you feel yourself getting into a rut. Many years ago I wrote a book Images of the South Wales Mines, and did quite a lot of work in and around the mines at the time when they were being closed down as the government of the day wrought its vengeance on the mining industry. Now all deep mining has ended in Wales and I have been working on a few more paintings of this vanished era.

The painting is a watercolour and charcoal work of Marine Colliery, Cwm, showing a coal train getting up steam. When it comes to painting industrial subjects I am a great fan of dirt, dust and steam, as it not only can create instant atmosphere, but can hide the bits you don’t want people to see. This is especially useful where you are painting a scene that no longer exists, and are not sure about what exactly went where! While this was not true of the painting depicted, I have used the ploy in other situations, so if you are painting such scenes do make full use of the dirt and dust.

This is one of a collection of paintings that will be on display at the Corner House Gallery at 38 Quay Street, Ammanford in Carmarthenshire. Tel. 01269 594959  They will be exhibited from the afternoon of Thursday 4th August onwards, and I shall be there on that afternoon, so do come along and have a chat. To see some of the paintings in the collection click here.

Painting Greens in the Summer Landscape

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Summer is a lovely time of the year to be out sketching and painting in the countryside and it is hard to beat sitting beside a babbling brook with your picnic and at the same time painting the water sparkling and dancing in the sunlight. However, when confronted with so much greenery in a profusion of varied greens many artists find it quite overwhelming.

This small watercolour of a Derbyshire hay meadow is featured in my article on painting summer landscapes in the current issue (August) of Leisure Painter magazine which covers the three different approaches to tackling greens as well as mixing your greens. Often, though, not everything we see as being green is actually that colour. Grass-heads are often a different colour to their stems and you see the effect of a mass of warm-coloured grass-tops in the painting above in the horizontal band just below the cottage. In the tree shadow areas and much of the foreground detail the darks have been created with a mixture of French ultramarine plus either burnt umber or raw umber, not green.

Try not to have too many different greens in your composition: if you attempt to emulate every green you see before you the painting will become too disparate and messy. Bring more blues and greys into the more distant green areas, as this will not only relieve the overwhelming sight of so much green, but will also suggest a greater sense of distance and space.

There is much more on the subject in the article, and you will also find further advice on the subject in my DVD Painting Summer Landscapes, produced by APV Films, and available from my website

For something completely different see the Forthcoming Events page on this blog for my landscape paintings at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, and mining paintings at Corner House Gallery. Painting coal mines is the perfect antidote to those summer greens, of course!