Bluff Knoll Blizzard

Recently I've been learning a little about how to predict snow falls, especially in southern WA.

Snow is almost unheard of in this state but at 1095m above sea level, Bluff Knoll does enjoy a some light falls a few times a year.

I had been watching the weather charts all week and it was looking good for today and tomorrow. When I checked today's forecast this morning, it had possible snow drifts predicted for the Stirling Range this afternoon and evening.

My wife and I headed out to Bluff Knoll around 3pm. The sun was shining, the wind was light and there were clouds drifting across the top of Bluff Knoll. There was a definite chill in the air, but it was beautiful and serene.

I set my DSLR camera up on a tripod right next to my car so I could sit in relative warmth. I attached a timer cable and when I was done taking a few test shots, I looked up and there no more sunlight anywhere.

I set the timer to take one picture every five seconds and left it to shoot until the memory card was full.

Janet had "gone for a walk" and sent me a text message warning of some approaching dark clouds. The storm was soon with me and it hit with a vengeance. I was busy trying to tie the tripod down so it wouldn't blow over, as sleet whipped past me, piling up on the back window of the car, and soaking through my jacket and jeans.

Janet was "somewhere" on the walk trail, sheltering beside trees and basically getting soaked. She had a great time watching flurries of snow.

While I could only describe the weather I witnessed in the car park as "sleet" rather than "snow", there were people on top of the mountain and they most definitely enjoyed the real thing, even if it did arrive horizontally and and great speed. We met the brave souls before we packed up and they showed us photos of the snow on the ground. There was enough to make some snow balls.

The worst of the blizzard lasted around 15 minutes and quickly cleared. Soon after, the setting sun cast a warm glow over everything before ducking behind a cloud. Day soon turned to night, the camera's memory card was full and we packed up, dried ourselves off, chucked the heater on in the car and headed home.

Over 1 hour, 40 minutes the camera took just over 1500 photos. I used the images to create a one minute time-lapse video.

Spring was here!

It took a while to arrive, but spring did show itself for a few days recently. But, with summer just two weeks away, the grey weather has returned.

I bought myself some new brushes recently. I've been using flat synthetic brushes for the last couple of years but now I'm returning to good old, tried and tested hog bristles. The synthetics started to get a little bit too frustrating as they loose shape fairly quickly, even with careful washing and storage. They also occasionally refused to let go of the paint when making a stroke and I found myself adding more and more turps or medium to try and get things to work properly. There were times where this seriously slowed things down and time is one commodity the plein air painter rarely has enough of.

I might write a bit more about that once I've tamed my new bristles.

The continuing grey weather has given the opportunity to spend a little time in the studio and this week I did something I've rarely done in the past - I painted over some plein air sketches that I felt needed a lift in order to become frame-worthy.

The first one is a painting I did a while ago. It was painted very late in the day and the light faded fast. I used a "pre-mix" approach where almost all the colours are mixed on the palette before any colour is applied to the painting surface.

I mixed a few main colours for the trees - shadows and highlights, warms and cools - two for the hills, a few for the ground and two for the clouds, plus some blues for the sky. This was a first for me and I can see some potential advantages in the method when the light is changing fast, but I'm not sure how often I'll use it. What I generally tend to do is use a mix-and-apply approach in combination with pre-mixes for some specific areas where I want to lock-in colours at a given time.
 

  Porongurup Sheep. 

Plein air sketch. 35x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

I liked the general structure of this one but the major forms were a little fractured and it lacked punch. I particularly wanted the sheep to catch a bit more of the evening sunlight. So I carefully scraped back the dry paint with a new palette knife, to get rid of the biggest ridges, and got to work. Here's the result...

  Porongurup Sheep. 

35x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

My second re-do was first just two weeks ago. It was a perfect afternoon and I hadn't looked at this location before. The distant air was thick with sunlit vapour and almost swallowed the Porongurup Range less than ten kilometres away.

This was the first time I used my new brushes and was very pleased with the process. Here's the painting as it stood when I packed up...

  Takenup Cattle. 

Plein air sketch. 35x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

...and a location shot, of course, for people who like that sort of thing...

And here it is after I scraped back the ridges and painted over it in the studio.

  Takenup Cattle. 

35x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

I feel the end result does a far better job of capturing the glowing atmospheric light that attracted me in the first place. I also reduced some of the mid-ground clutter by deleting what appeared to be a second dam behind the one where the cows are standing.

In both cases, the major change I wanted to make was to add more warmth. I prefer bright, warm paintings but it can be easy to lose vibrancy when you're standing on the side of the road and painting quickly.

Both paintings were done - and re-done - using a three-colour palette.

Spring: plein air cloudscape in oil

Earlier this year I decided my next major project was to be plein air clouds.

Clouds are sods of things to paint on location because they move much faster than we would usually realise. Even those massive cumulus clouds, that look too big to move, refuse to stay still when you try to paint them.

Last weekend, at the end of a particularly gloomy day where the sun refused to shine, I took the gamble and headed down to the coast where I thought I might get some good views of clouds in the evening light. I was prepared to paint grey skies if that's all I had to choose from.

I walked along the beach for quite a while, looking in different directions and doing small thumbnail sketches of mostly-grey scenes before finally seeing some colour creeping into a bank of clouds in the eastern sky.

Most people probably think of the dramatic reds and oranges of western skies when they think of sunsets but the eastern evening sky can be especially attractive as the clouds reflect the warm but subtle, almost-pearlescent sunset colours.

 Perkins Beach, Spring Evening. 

Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

The thing that really caught my eye when I decided to paint this scene was the strong reflection of the sunlit cloud in the ocean. By the time I'd set up my easel and laid out my colours, the cloud had moved - a lot. I used a combination of different clouds and a dose of memory to put the main cloud where I wanted it.

When I began, there was no sunlight hitting anything below sky level, but as I was working the central breakers were pleasantly spot-lit, for about ten minutes, so I decided to include that effect.

I did a little work on this one back in the studio, mainly darkening the ocean which looked much paler, once I could see it properly, than I thought it was on location. Other than that, it's pretty much how it was when I left the beach.

Palette: French ultramarine, permanent crimson, cadmium yellow light, titanium white.

I didn't get a location shot because it was dark when I packed up. I had to put my LED headlamp on to find my way back through the dunes to the car park.

Clouds - digital painting

I wanted to do another cloud painting and, with thunderstorms promised, I hoped this afternoon would provide an opportunity. I drove around the countryside for a while but nothing much came of it. The clouds just weren't doing anything useful for me.

We didn't even get the promised storm.

I did, however, revisit a location near Woogenellup. This spot grabs my attention whenever I drive past and it was the subject of a plein air painting, a digital painting and a studio painting three years ago (How time flies. I thought I did them last year!)

I considered doing another plein air sketch there today but with a heavy veil of cloud building in the west, it was apparent that the light was going to fade fast. I did a couple of thumbnail sketches to test some design ideas and see if that would make any difference, but it wasn't going to happen.

This evening, I started doodling in Photoshop and came up with this...

Woogie clouds.
Digital painting. 2200x2970px.  
© 2013, Andy Dolphin

This digital painting was done completely from the memory of what I saw today and what ideas I'd tried in the thumbnails. I guess I looked carefully at the scene for about five minutes, all up. But I didn't even refer to the thumbnails for this painting, just my recollection of them and the three paintings I'd done before.

There are some obvious differences from my earlier paintings, not least of which is the mountain ridge rising from left to right. This is a design decision and does not reflect reality.

The biggest change, though, was to choose a vertical format and make the sky much more important. For the cloud shape, I drew on the memory of my previous plein air cloud painting.

I think it's got possibilities for this, my "Year of the Cloud".

Technical specs: Photoshop CS5, Wacom Graphire 4 tablet using stylus held together with sticky tape, digital brush from Chris Wahl.

Winter Light - plein air video

It's winter down here in the southern hemisphere so it's been a bit cold and damp lately. However, a few days ago we had scattered showers combined with moments of bright sunlight and this made for interesting painting conditions.

 Winter Light.
Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board. 
© Andy Dolphin

I found a spot beside the highway with a view across farmland to the Porongurup Range. There were clouds draped over the peaks of the range and a strip of sunlight lit up a distant paddock. It was a scene ready for painting and it looked like an interesting subject for my second plein air painting video.

Luckily, the rain held off long enough for me to get the sketch done.


NOTE: You can watch the video here on the blog but I'd recommend going to Youtube and viewing it at full size (click the little "cog" symbol and choose 480p if your internet connection can cope).

Thanks again to Kevin MacLeod, who offers hundreds of royalty-free music tracks on his Incompotech website. 

You can see my first painting video, Barrow Road, on Youtube too.

Seascape painting; Misery

It's not as bad as it sounds...

On Wednesday I headed down to Misery Beach, near Albany. I'm not sure how this gorgeous and secluded little beach got its name but one popular suggestion is that waste products from the nearby whaling station used to wash up here before the facility ceased operations in 1978.

Conditions were mostly overcast when I arrived but the sun did break through in short intervals every ten or fifteen minutes, or so. It was windy too!

It's been a long time since I've set up the easel on beach sand and it's always an interesting challenge. The legs have to be fully extended and pushed into the sand - because they're going to sink in anyway and you don't need that happening while you're painting. And you have to be careful not to get sand into everything when you're doing stuff you normally don't need to think about.

Oh, and don't drop a brush full of paint into the sand. It's a nuisance. I know because I did it. Luckily it was only my rigger so it was easy to clean. If you drop your main brush, you'll almost certainly end up spreading grains of sand across your painting unless you have a large jar of solvent you can rinse it out in.

Anyway, here's the location shot. I had to fold up the easel and lean it against a stair case because the wind was threatening to blow it over if I walked away while it was still set up.

And here's the finished piece with no adjustments or additions made later.

 (Misery Beach. Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I used a very limited palette for this one to keep things simple. Because of the overcast conditions, I went for ultramarine, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. I chose these colours because the actual scene reminded me of one of the paintings in the "oil painting in different palettes" exercise I did last year.

It was mid-afternoon when I painted this. The key to it, and what attracted my attention, is the shadow being cast half-way down the face of the dune and the way this shadow-highlight line zig-zags into the scene.

One hour earlier that shadow wouldn't have been there at all. One hour later, as I was finishing, the shadow covered the whole face of the dune. Either case might still have offered the opportunity for  a satisfactory painting but each one would have a different feeling.

Oil and digital seascape sketches

View to Green Islands, Albany. Photo by Andy Dolphin.

Date: Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Weather Forecast: Becoming fine.

I returned to Torndirrup National Park yesterday afternoon in the hope of capturing the sea at its best as we'd had a bit of stormy weather the day before. When I arrived, there was a decent swell combined with a high tide pushing some big waves into shore. A gentle, warm breeze made conditions perfect for painting.

I love the way some waves hit the rocks and explode. There's no other way to describe it. The best of them even send out a solid "boom!" when they hit. You can feel it in your chest.

I set up in a moderately comfy spot well above the wave line and got to work. Using ultramarine, burnt sienna and cad yellow light, I looked straight into the sun and got this...

(Boom! Sketch. 30x25cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

For a plein air piece, I'm pretty happy with it. There's a lot going on when you're there, on site. Every wave is different and they don't all go "boom!" right where you want them to - and a lot of those that do go "boom!" in the right place, do it when you're looking elsewhere. The clouds shift constantly so the sheen on the water comes and goes and the sun sets quickly, dropping more into view and changing the colour of everything. I tried to ignore all that and spent just over an hour on this painting.

This morning, without looking at yesterday's painting, and relying solely on memory, I did a quick digital sketch of the "same" subject. There's about half an hour's work here...

(Boom! Digital sketch. 800x600px. © Andy Dolphin)

The beauty of working from memory like this is that reality doesn't interfere. With the memory of yesterday still vivid, I can design things the way I want them, out of my head. I put rocks where I want them, invent wave directions and use colours that I feel will achieve the desired result.

It can be difficult to make such decisions in the field with a scene that always looks exciting but which won't stay still. For example, I noticed at one point that the splashes of the waves were casting very clear shadows across the foreground water at times, but installing those shadows into a half-finished oil sketch can be problematic because there just isn't time to be fussing with it. But those shadows were still clear in my mind this morning and I made sure to use them in the digital sketch.

The photo at the top of the article shows how the day ended, shortly after I'd packed up. What an awful way to have to spend an afternoon eh?

Oil Sketches - Porongurup

I've not had much opportunity to get out and paint recently but did manage these two quick sketches in the last week.

The first was completed in around 15 minutes and was the end result of a "comedy of errors".

I was breaking in a new French easel and had prepared the palette by staining it with old oil paint to give it a dull grey colour - much better for mixing paint on. When I arrived on site to paint (after driving around aimlessly for over an hour, close to sunset), I opened up the easel only to find I'd left the palette at home. Hmmm.

Luckily, I usually carry a few primed painting boards with me and one of these had to play at being a palette for a while. I wiped a bit of turps over it to give it a bit of slip. It wasn't too bad but did hold onto the paint mixes more than a properly prepared palette.

By now, the sun was already low and things were starting to colour-up. So I put a red, yellow and blue out and started painting. I was set up in front of a farm gate and, sure enough, the owner came along and needed to get out. So I moved a couple of metres across and continued. Then the sun disappeared behind clouds, then everything turned shades of red - before going dark. I strapped a headlamp on as I added the final brushstrokes.

(Tree sketch. Oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

The second painting was a little more straightforward. It was still begun a little later than usual and the sun did tend to hide behind clouds most of the time but I got an extra five minutes or so to complete it before it went dark. I'm going to go back to this spot again with a bit more time up my sleeve.

(Porongurup sketch. Oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I have been working on another painting for a few weeks now. It's a new subject for me and I'm taking a different approach with it. It's proving more challenging than I'd anticipated but hopefully I'll post a finished pic soon.

Scattered Showers

My latest painting shows summer showers passing over the Porongurup Range.

(Scattered Showers. 70x37cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Clouds in oil

I love clouds. There are various types of formations, including stratus, cirrus and cumulus and infinite variations within, and combinations of, those categories.

I love them but rarely use them as a subject in their own right. I'll have to do something about that.

(Clouds over Mt Barker. 22x20cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)
SOLD
 

These, I believe, are cumulus clouds and they were building prior to a thunderstorm.

I painted this from my back verandah, an hour or so before the short-lived storm hit. The clouds were moving and changing very fast so, to speed things up, I used a limited palette. Even so, I had to "invent" most of the cloud detail, using bits of other clouds that formed and drifted by as reference.