Lagoinha do Norte, morning, July

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Lagoinha do Norte, morning, July, oil on card, 30 x 28 cm  available

 

Lagoinha do Norte, morning, July - detail

 

 

 

 

 

The paintings are growing steadily larger and this means that colour effects- whether harmonious or otherwise- become more obvious. It makes me think my colour is very brash. But perhaps I am simply over-sensitive? At what point does bright become brash?

I love the freedom of movement that a larger format gives, especially with scumbling and other brush marks.

 

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 This camera, a Lumix DMC-1X7 is not good at registering certain contrasting colours. There's a peach colour in the picture that is not effectively shown here.

 

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Praia Moçambique, looking inland, mid-afternoon

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Praia Moçambique, looking inland, mid-afternoon, oil on card, 27.5 x 30 cm - available

 

Photo

 

The camera- a Lumix DMX  - has certain baises, and dislikes certain colour contrasts especially where pinks meet greens. I messed about for ages in the editor and never hit the nailhead. Well, I think it is more or less right.

Painting 

 

I loved painting here. The sun was not too tyrannous, and I could perch myself on a little knoll above the sands.

I finished before the late afternoon light comes raking in sideways- quite glorious to see- and I shall return today to see if I can capture this. I usually avoid going the the same place on successive days (does that  make me sound rather like a serial killer?) as I benefit from  having a fresh impression but I shall, exceptionately, break this rule.

I have been working on a larger scale and this allows more spacious painting, with looser brushwork-  most enjoyable.

 

Black  

 

I have also re-introduced black to my palette. 

Thanks, in part to the Impressionists many painters plein air painters avoid black as the Impressionists  had argued that black doesn't exist in "nature" and they held fidelity to nature as a high value (as if painting itself exists in "nature"). 

But, I'd avoided putting out blacks for a long time not because of reverence to the Impressionists but becauses they so readily pollute other colours on the palette, and all the mixtures can become greyed out.

 I am trying to use it discreetly. 

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Rio: The Ibis Hotel room nocturne; painting nocturnes

Rio: Ibis Hotel room nocturne

 oil on card, 12.3 x 9cm - discarded

The view from the hotel is of some administrative buildings.

To paint these things you nee to find a way of  getting light on your support without losing your ability to see the thing in front of you. But this is surprisingly difficult, because when you illuminate the support, your motif will often fade out. I think I shall try to get one of those little reading lights that they advertise in magazines, usually with images of elderly couples in a double bed, one asleep, the other deep in George Eliot. That might be ideal: they have a little clip so you can attach them onto your book, or in my case, picture.

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Photographing these nocturnes is very hard, there are almost always reflections in one place or other.

Rough sea, Priaia Mole

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Rough sea, Praia Mole, oil on card, 9.2 x 7 cm   AVAILABLE

A windy, sometimes wet day: Turner would have been happy. Tomorrow, I shall do another here.

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I've been loading the images on Flicker and Facebook at too high a pixellation so that when people click on them they fill the whole of their screens. I'm going to use a much lower hieght-width ratio in future.

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Itacorubi Cemetery

Itacorubi Cemetery, Florianopolis, oil on card, 9.7 x 13.7 cm

An Edwardian sort of painting, with echoes of Sargent or Lavery. There's a certain slickness in that sort of painting that I've never been entirely comfortable with: salon art, bravura art, art made to impress one rather than move one. It died with the First World War.

It was very hard to get the right colour balance when photographing this: I found that photographing the picture against a dark red background helps, otherwise the camera, a Lumix (Panasonic) exaggerates the yellow and loses the blues.