some snippets of my farmscapes paintings in progress...
[farmscapes, september 2009]on my way back from visiting a fellow artist today, i stopped briefly to sketch some water...
[study of water, in graphite, about 15 minutes; maybe i should try watercolour...]
[second study - with three ducks, about ten minutes...]
[quick sketch looking through the hedgerow, also about ten munutes...]
i was thinking whilst drawing, of the process of learning to draw, how drawing is essentially translating the sensation of observing into a tangible, physical mark... i sketched quickly, using a near continuous line, using variants of pressure to deliberate and then assert each mark of the graphite... i made decisions but i did not judge the outcome, preferring to allow it to weave together and slowly build up...
the problem people have with drawing is that they judge too soon, making comparisons on a scale of likeness or realism rather than believability... a drawing can be convincing or credible without being realistic... graphite imparts the qualities of graphite... soft, irregular, tonal... a graphite stick may not be the perfect medium to quickly render the glassy reflectiveness and edges of rippling water, but it suits the spontaneous act of drawing, of making marks on a surface, taking a line for a walk or a quick stroll... in the countryside.
gnarled oak tree trunk
oak bark
stripped bark
young leaning tree
pollard trees
upturned dead tree with roots exposed
tree with split branches
[sketchbook drawings... in the woods, september 2009]after a week of teaching, it was a relaxing break to find a couple of hours of solitude by more drawing in the woods... it is not all green leaves; there are knotty and gnarled tree trunks to touch, cracked and split bark surfaces, smaller pollards and spindly saplings, the felled and fallen branches left to season or decay into the leafy carpet. the greenest signs of growth are mostly in the woodland's high canopy...
[the artist measuring an old oak tree...]i had previously learnt from the 
[out of the woods; out of focus...]
more of my rustic experiments in colour and texture, signed, dated, numbered, scanned and digitised.. it's a curious thing; some are landscapes, as i begin to see the inevitable influence of fields, horizons, tracks, hedgerows and fences... others orientate themselves into a vertical format, reminding me more of barn structures, doors, gateposts, exposed beams, the rusty corrugated metal of makeshift sheds.. all colours synthesized... it's either arable landscape or rural architecture.it seemed, at first, quite simple to reduce everything to striations of colour, but i have found this process to be very meditative, a discipline of mind and hand, as a more precise controlled painted line moves over a textural surface, new relationships in colour and texture occur, which influences the next painting action... it's intuitive and yet not entirely random, since intuition relies on some cognitive insight or emotional connection, the sum of our experiences.how many hues of brown: dark chestnut, mahogany red, russets, autumn berries, the seed heads of dock, wood bark.. the subtlety of greys: in soil, dust, the sky, clouds, a found flint, a beach pebble... finding analogies for interpreting these colours take me back to 'nature'... and nature has the last word in colour-coordination, as the approach of autumn signals.these are not studies for larger paintings, but in a sense they should be.. in abstract painting, a system, structure and order, is needed to turn the painterly mess of making into a process of clarity, with a purpose, with some meaningfulness.. just ten more to do, and the series is complete.. but as i approach it, maybe 100 is not quite enough.see more of this series of 100 small