Author Archives: David Bellamy

Painting and mountaineering in Holland

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So what can Holland offer the mountain painter? Well, not many mountains, but there are marvellous opportunities for other subjects. I’ve not long returned from a few days in the Netherlands where I wanted to visit the Arnhem battlefield site and also sketch some Dutch maritime subjects, which I’ve always admired. But there was so much more: Amsterdam offered great opportunities for sketching those lovely traditional Dutch barges, the picturesque waterways, which at this time of year are fresh with new foliage on the trees, the incredible canal houses with their hugely varied gables, and bikes, bikes, bikes!

There was a sketch everywhere and not enough time to do it justice, and even sitting at an outdoor cafe sipping a cappuccino brought no relief, for the figures walking, cycling, hopping and shuffling past demanded so much attention from my pencil. What intrigued me was the number of blokes who came up and photographed me painting and sketching, though not one took the slightest interest in the work being done. Many artists shy away from working outdoors because of onlookers, but there are many ways to counter this.

Wear a large, wide-brimmed hat. This will isolate you from all but the most persistent onlooker, especially if you are sitting down. Have a second hat with some coins in placed upside down in front of your position – this will distance many, but at least if they approach closer you may be rewarded. When asked a question reply in a foreign language – Welsh is excellent for this, as even Berber children in Morocco, the true afficionados of artist-baiters, are hard pushed to counter this. If you are truly desperate then take along a disreputable-looking friend to stand beside you. My friend Michiel finds that when he is out walking with his friend Griswallt most people will immediately cross to the other side of the road when they see old Grissie approaching. So don’t be too alarmed if you find some wierd characters staring at your painting and making the most awfully nice comments about it…….

I’ll be showing some of the work from Holland in a future blog, but do enjoy it when you’re out there sketching – it can be great fun!

Rearranging a Composition

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Very few scenes in the countryside happen to be exactly as we would wish them to be when we are about to paint them – a little jigging around with the composition is usually necessary. In the photograph of the Meon Valley in winter shown below, there are a number of basic changes that can be made before beginning to paint. Study the scene for a few minutes and consider what you might do to improve the way the main elements hang together.

The placid stream reflected warmer colours as the afternoon wore on, while the constant coming and going of the birdlife enlivened the scene. It cried out to be sketched and with such lovely, delicate colours I plumped for a watercolour sketch. The first thing that struck me was the direction of the stream: it would be much improved if it led into the picture and not to one side as it does here. That, in fact is what the stream actually did, but within the confines of a photograph I couldn’t show this.

While I sometimes include telephone poles, here they simply add clutter, so I left them out for a cleaner tree-line. Quite a bit of simplifying was necessary, firstly in the sky – although the sky is quite washed out, in reality there were a great many small clouds, so I reduced these to one simple line of dark cloud; secondly the foreground demanded a broad-brush approach, eliminating most of the clumps of grass. I also warmed up the sky and associated reflection in the water.

You can see my response in the watercolour sketch in the June issue of Leisure Painter magazine, on page 26, in an article on painting placid water. The July issue will include my article on painting turbulent water, followed in August by one on painting summer landscapes, and how to cope with all those greens. Why not visit the magazine’s painting community at http://www.painters-online.co.uk/

Painting Ice

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As far as I’m aware, most sensible folk only cross glaciers to get to the mountains beyond. Painting ice, however, is one of my great passions, and as glaciers contain rather a lot of the stuff they tend to be something of a magnet. Ice can be formed into the most fantastic and surreal shapes, with a wide range of glorious colours, from blues, greys and greens to yellows and even orange on occasion.

Getting down into the awesome crevasses and under the ice brings even greater rewards, as looking out through ice formations can accentuate the intensity of the colours, seeing light through translucent ice. In this watercolour of a moulin on the Greenland ice-cap my biggest problem was to show scale. There was no room for anyone to stand safely to put them in the picture to suggest the vast size of the place, so the figure had to be added in the studio. I had made notes on the original sketch to indicate size.

To create texture on the ice I flung sea-salt into the wet washes, and you can see the results in the bottom left-hand corner and in the centre between the two falls. I’ve moved some of the ice shapes around to improve the composition, and slightly warmed up the colours in places by mixing cadmium red into the ultramarine.

When seeking out places like this I find it is well worth employing a local guide who knows where these features are. It’s all too easy to miss them by 100 metres and wander around all day finding nothing. It also allows me to concentrate on the painting. On this occasion I hired Kim, a guide with World of Greenland expeditions, in Kangerlussuaq: see http://www.wogac.com/  Oh, and don’t try this sort of thing unless you have the experience plus experienced companions or a guide………….it’s rather dangerous.

Pencil sketching outdoors

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Jenny and I have just returned from a break in Pembrokeshire where the weather was ideal for sketching: balmy sunshine with a lovely haze that lost all the distant detail we didn’t really want to include in our sketches, and hardly any wind. Strong winds can make life sheer hell for the artist, especially if you happen to be perched on a knife-edge ridge high up on the crags.

Garn Folch is just about the wildest jumble of rocks in the county, as though some giant has decided to hurl a few bits of mountain around and then brushed them up into a pile. Often scenes like this work well in a semi-abstract rendering. This is a rapid pencil sketch carried out on an A5 hardback book with part of the left-hand image spilling onto the next page. The roof of the cottage was fine, a typical north Pembrokeshire style with a light slurried covering over the slates. The rest of the house was a mess of scaffolding, huge modern windows and a garage front on one side, so I simply scribbled in a few details with a 4B as I thought it may have looked fifty years ago.

Sometimes it pays not to get too close to your subject. The imagination can conjure up all manner of desirable objects in the distance, which can lose their romanicism at close range. My walk then took me closer to the cottage, but the scene failed to improve……but round the corner appeared a really spectacular view of more crags, which I captured with watercolour and an inadvertent touch of cappuccino.

Painting moody mountains

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When you’re starting a blog for the first time, where do you begin? Why start one at all? Well, I love bringing the wonderful world of nature to folk, through the medium of my art. I shall be trying to help students along with their painting as I’ve been doing for a great many years through my books, articles and DVDs, relating my adventures in the great outdoors, discussing some of the characters I meet, whether two-legged, three-legged or more, as well as chatting about art and the countryside.

Being a landscape painter who mainly specialises in the wilder type of scenery I was bowled over by the amazing atmosphere in this mountain scene when I did some walking in Snowdonia last month. It cried out to be sketched and soon I shall paint it in the studio. Whether you are interested in painting mountains or not, you can learn much from observing this scene: the few colours involved, which give it a great sense of unity and mood; the strong contrast between sparkling water and gloomy mountains; the manner in which the background peaks merge into the cloud-laden sky. I’d more or less paint it as it stands, perhaps simply making the central rock larger, with a touch of colour to set it off as a centre of interest. It’s one of those few compositions that need little changing from the real thing.

Enjoy your painting!