Tangled Web: studio oil painting

Here's number two in my "year of the tree" series.

This group of white gums sits on a farm a few kilometres from home.

While I was initially taken in by the view to the Stirling Range, I was also interested in the patterns created by the twisting trunks and tangled branches and the umbrella-shaped leaf canopies that are typical of many large eucalypts.

As with my last painting, I wanted to capture the strong feeling of sunlight, not only as it played directly across the trunk, branches and leaves of the central tree, but also as it reflected onto the shaded side of the trunk and the undersides of the branches. In fact the shaded branches in the upper canopy have a younger, reddish bark that positively glows with the warmth and strength of that reflected light.

Although they run cattle on this property, I wanted something understated to help balance the image so I added three sheep to the left side. The fence post is also the result of some artistic licence.
 

Tangled Web

60x40cm oil on board.  

© Andy Dolphin

As before, that shadow colour on the main trunk looked like mud until the bright highlight was placed alongside it. It's quite unnerving to have it sitting there looking "wrong" but I'm sure I'll learn to trust it after painting a few more of these trees.

The trick with something like that is to trust the tone. You need to get that right or it will never work.

Start with what you consider to be the true "local" colour of the bark – a pale ochre in this case – then darken and cool it to the correct tone. Then you will need to add some reflected light into the mix for some parts of the tree. That reflected-light colour is dictated by the area surrounding the tree.

It can seem like a bit of a battle mixing a colour that is both warm and cool, but this approach should get you in the ballpark. Add variety to the bark with some slightly warmer and slightly cooler colours, and it will start to take form.

Organised Chaos: studio oil painting

I think I've decided to make 2017 the year of the tree, at least as far as painting goes.

Some of my earliest subjects, when I began pursuing fine art, were the karri trees of the southwest. These are among the tallest trees in the world and I produced quite a few paintings where karris were the star.

But in recent years I haven't really used trees as a focal point. Sure, they've been there in the landscape but, since the karri paintings, I have rarely studied trees as a subject in their right.

First cab off the rank for my "year of the tree" is a studio painting of a group of whitegums, or wandoo, which I found on a farm not far from home.

Whitegums are endemic to Western Australia and have a beautiful creamy, honey-coloured and mottled-grey bark that positively glows in light or shade. Older whitegums, especially those in exposed positions, have a tendency to lose limbs over the years and to twist and turn as the elements take their toll.

With branches snaking in all directions as they compete for light, and sometimes falling to the floor or getting hung up in other branches, the trees take on a kind of organised chaos in their constant struggle to survive.

In this painting, I attempt to capture some of that chaos by looking at the base of a group of whitegum trunks. I don't know if this is one tree that divided early in its life, or if three separate trees have survived for years huddled together. I suspect the former.

Organised Chaos

60x40cm oil on board.  

© Andy Dolphin

At 60cm x 40cm, this painting is somewhat bigger than the paintings I was doing leading up to my recent hiatus. The larger surface gave me the opportunity to explore the seemingly random pattern of branches in the tree canopy.

One important achievement in this piece was to get a sense of the reflected light illuminating the shaded sides of the trunks. Those are interesting colours to mix because they look like dark mud on the palette and yet have a warm glow about them when placed in context in the painting. The "mud" really came to life when the bright highlights were added to edge of the tree trunks.

Drought broken

For the last six months, or more, tracks and paddocks in this region have been turning into streams and lakes. Whilst apparently not record-breaking, it's the most persistent rain we've seen since moving to the area 13 years ago.

But, more importantly, I managed to get out into the studio on Sunday and knock out a painting: my first oil painting in over two years. Yes, the drought has broken.

 

Devil's View

25x35cm oil on canvas board.  

© Andy Dolphin

Inspired by recent traverses into the nearby mountain ranges with my son, this scene begged to be painted the first time I saw it.

The large granite peak sits near the top of the walk to the Devil's Slide in the Porongurup Range. The northern view shows the Stirling Range on the horizon.

To give some indication of the size of the central boulder, the large dark green mass below it is a forest of karri, one of the world's tallest tree species.

In short, it's a big lump of rock.

This is a small 10" x 14" painting on commercial canvas board, a surface I haven't painted on for years. I'm going to let it sit around for a while then possibly do a larger version of the same painting.

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.

Composition: plein air seascape in oil

When painting on location, there often isn't time to mess around with composing a scene.

If you have plenty of light left in the day, it can be very handy to knock out a couple of one-minute thumbnail sketches to see what presents itself as a strong composition. But as sunset draws near, those couple of minutes become precious. And you don't necessarily have a lot of different shaped boards to choose from when you're out and about so your composition options are limited from the outset.

This evening I headed back to the coast (almost 70km away) to see if I could do another cloud painting. We've had heavy cloud all day, not ideal conditions for painting either clouds or sunlight, but I decided to take the chance.

I arrived at Mutton Bird Beach about an hour-and-a-half before sunset and looked around for possible paintings. I did a few thumbnails but the light was dreadful so I continued looking around the area since I've not spent much time there before.

After walking a couple of kilometres down a four-wheel-drive track, and finding a spectacular location for future paintings, I headed back to the car park about half-an-hour before sunset.

The sky had cleared dramatically and Shelter Island was almost-glowing in the evening light. I knew it wouldn't last.

I quickly set up my easel, grabbed a board and began painting as soon as I could. Composition was the least of my concerns, I just wanted to record the sunlight. I didn't even stop to take a photo to use as a reference later, if I needed it.

I wanted to get rid of the white of the board so I could lay in some of the sunlight colours fairly accurately. I washed in major tones with paint so thin it was like watercolour - it's faster that way. Then I mixed up a couple of warm colours for the sunlit shrubs and rocks and roughed out those areas.

The island enjoyed sunlight for about five minutes after I began painting then the sun dropped behind a bank of clouds. With the sunlit image pretty clear in my mind, I continued painting even though everything was now in shadow.

In some respects, it was probably handy that the sunlight had gone because I wouldn't be teased by the scene changing colour every couple of minutes, as happens at that time of the day, and I could stick with the colour decisions I'd already locked in. I also had to not be distracted by the amazing stuff going on in the western sky (it was a gorgeous sunset).

I packed up when I realised it was so dark, I couldn't really tell what colour I was using anymore.

 Shelter Island. 

Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

Palette: French ultramarine, cadmium scarlet, cadmium yellow light, titanium white.

The painting is pretty rough. Some of the paint is so thin, I don't think it could be considered archival, so I can't sell it. I also think the composition is pretty boring. But I really like the main area of light and shade so I took a quick photo and messed around in Photoshop to see what compositional possibilities there were.

I particularly like the intimacy of option number two and think I might head back to the location with that composition in mind as my starting point. And, with half the problem already solved, I could probably do a larger painting and take a little more time by starting earlier in the day.

Over the last couple of years, my attitude to plein air work has changed - and continues to change. I used to only paint if the light was perfect and likely to remain stable and if I was pretty sure I'd get a finished painting from a session. I'd usually spend two hours or more on one painting on location.

These days, I'm forcing myself to be more adventurous. I head out when it's cloudy, I start paintings late in the day when stable light is not just unlikely, it's impossible. I paint fast and I end up with whatever I end up with. Sometimes I get a result that's worth framing, sometimes I need to do some touching-up in the studio for a frameable result and other times I scrape the painting, or let it dry then throw it in the corner, with all the other "could-a-beens".

Quite a few of the paintings I've posted on this blog are in that pile because the blog isn't about great art but the pursuit of art. I'm pretty fussy about what I actually let out of the door and into the market place.

But the "failures" still have value, even if it's just from the act of getting out and painting - and that is possibly the most valuable part of the experience. It's taken me a long time to realise just how important it is to just get out there and paint and "bugger the consequences".

Twelve months ago, or even six months ago, I would not have thrown the easel in the car on a day like today. I would have looked out at the grey sky and decided to give painting a miss. As it turned out, I took the chance, went for the drive and had an amazing afternoon.

I still struggle with painting when there's no clear sunlight and shadow, but that can be next year's project.

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.

Shelley Beach - plein air seascape in oil

Shelley Beach sits at the edge of West Cape Howe, the most-southern point in WA. It's an isolated beach surrounded by steep hills and is a favoured spot for parasailing, with two launch pads located on one of the hilltops.

I headed out there yesterday evening in the hope of capturing a nice sunset painting. When I arrived, there was a thunder storm heading in from the west, over the hills. I ventured down to the carpark by the beach and pondered the possibilities. Everything was grey and there didn't seem to be much chance of painting.

Just before I went to leave, I noticed one big sunlit cloud in the east. I didn't have my camera with me, and it was too late to go anywhere else to paint, so I decided to just do a quick cloud study.

Shelley Beach Evening. 

Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

It was clear the cloud wasn't going to be sunlit for very long so I drew in the rough shape and quickly applied a purply-blue to the shaded areas, leaving the sunlit portion white.

Next I mixed up the sky blue and quickly painted this around the cloud. Precision wasn't important - there was no time for fluffing around. Behind me, the thunder was still closing in and the sky took on an amazing glow over the hills. I almost stopped what I was doing and considered painting the view to the west but decided to keep going.

By now, there was no sunlight on the feature cloud so I decided to lay in a bit of the land and sea, for context. Before I knew it, I'd almost painted a complete seascape - and it wasn't looking too bad at all. The thunderstorm was now starting to come around the headland behind me and I kept seeing flashes of lightning in the corner of my eye. There were a couple of good flashes above me too, with loud claps of thunder. I expected to get drenched any minute.

With the rocks, ocean and beach laid in, I went back and added the sunlight to the cloud. Then I flicked a few touches of colour around the rest of the painting.

It was quite dark by the time I put the brushes down. The rain pretty much held off until I was back in the car and heading home, with lightning all around.

I did a bit of tidying up on the painting back in the studio.

Newdegate Field Days

The Newdegate Machinery Field Days began in 1972 and are run by volunteer committee. Spread across the first Wednesday and Thursday in September, the Newdegate Machinery Field Days is an event that keeps our committee busy all year round and our community busy in the weeks leading up to our event. Our aim is to host a world class agricultural machinery display, which has now expanded to include livestock, family and recreational interests.

The successful running of the Newdegate Machinery Field Days has enabled us to support our local community with donations to many local projects.

All of our volunteers record their hours to a local club or the Royal Flying Doctor who benefit with a donation from NMFD. We are also in partnership with National Disability Services and honour their Companion Card Scheme. [source]

I've been telling myself for the last 10 years, since moving to Mt Barker, that I should enter some work in the Newdegate Field Days art competition. I finally did it this year and decided that I should also go and take a look at the exhibition. It's a little under 300km by road from Mt Barker to Newdegate and it takes a little over three hours to drive there.

It was a fantastic couple of days. My wife and I had two nights' accommodation arranged on a farm about 50km north of Newdegate. I sold both paintings at the exhibition, so had nothing to pick up and bring home. The weather was perfect - clear skies, warm, sunny days and still nights with starry skies.

The 3,000 hectare (7,500 acre) farm features wheat and barley and around 3,000 head of sheep. Our wonderful host, Doug, gave us a tour of the property which features some amazing landscape painting opportunities.

I was up and about at sunrise on our first morning and headed to a spot I'd noticed the previous evening, where a farm track deviates around a group of Salmon Gums. It's a simple landscape featuring a white sand track. I love white sand tracks and this scene was made for painting - so I painted it. It's not often that things are arranged exactly as you want them.

Around the trees. 

Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

Salmon Gums are beautiful, stately trees. The leaves are incredibly dark green and form massive canopies, sometimes resembling giant umbrellas. The trunks are pale and glossy so they change colour dramatically, depending on the time of day and the hue of the sunlight.

I began with a rough wash of cadmium scarlet to tone sections of the board before laying in the painting. I used a limited palette of ultramarine, cadmium yellow light and cadmium scarlet - something I plan to do more of when painting on location. Most of the trunk on the main tree was added using a palette knife and I was really pleased with the result.

While I was painting, a large flock of sheep moved through the shadow cast by the trees. If I do a  larger version of this one, I might add the sheep in.

Here's the location shot...

That afternoon, I headed out to a spot where the mostly-flat land rises abruptly up a white limestone escarpment.

The sun was dropping fast and I knew I was going to be pushed for time on this one. I had to think fast and make sure I got the most important shapes locked in before all the shadows had shifted. I painted for about 45 minutes, but the main rock face fell into shadow after about 10 minutes. I relied on a quick under-painting to guide me as to where the sunlit areas were supposed to be.

I used the same limited palette as above but added permanent crimson to give me better purples in the shadows.

Here's how it ended up.

Newdegate escarpment. 

Plein air sketch. 25x30cm oil on board.

© Andy Dolphin

It's rough and suffers a bit in the composition department, but I think I've captured the general feeling of the spot. Between this plein air painting and a couple of location photos, I might be able to produce a decent studio piece.

I don't have a shot of the painting on location but you can see me working on it in the photo at the top of this article.

Big thanks to Doug for looking after us, showing us around and allowing me to explore the property.

Cottage - plein air oil painting

I mentioned recently that I've found a new favourite painting spot. It's a farm, less than 10 minutes from home, with a history dating back to the late 1800s.

I've been given permission to do some painting around the property and have spent quite a lot of time out there over the last week and have taken a lot of photos since the weather has been less-than-forgiving and mostly not suited to painting outdoors. So far, I've managed to paint five times, and it's rained on three of those occasions.

On my first visit, I wandered around an old, derelict cottage and was captivated by its sunlit eastern face. I photographed it and studied the photos over the last week. I even did a rough Photoshop sketch of it.

Today we had clear skies again, so I headed out to the farm knowing exactly what I planned to paint. It was time to test my "contemporary impressionism" skills again.

So, without further ado, I bring you "Narpyn Cottage, winter morning"...

Narpyn Cottage, winter morning.
Plein air. 38x35cm oil on board.
© Andy Dolphin

At 38x35cm, this is probably the second-biggest plain air painting I've ever done and, at somewhere between 3.5-4 hours to complete, it took the longest, by far. I don't think it's finished yet, though.

Here's stage 1 - the under-painting...

This is a combination of washing-in and wiping-out. Although the idea is to keep things fairly loose, a lot of important questions are asked at this stage. Where are the major darks? What's warm, what's cool? Is it too centred, too high, too low? Why do people say painting is relaxing? Should I have taken up golf instead? The questions just keep coming – the same questions, every time. Some remain unanswered.

There's 15-30 minutes work here.

And here's stage 2, almost two hours in (I didn't know it had taken that long, but that's what my camera claims)...

By this time, the sun had risen pretty high and shifted across to the left, so the shadows had all changed. It was important to try and stick with my layout and not be tempted by what I was seeing in front of me. By the time I finished, the sun had moved far enough that none of these walls were sunlit.

Ordinarily, a thumbnail sketch is a useful reference for dealing with the changing-shadows problem but, in this case, I'd had the image stuck in my head for a week, so I didn't do a thumbnail.

I used the palette knife quite a bit in this painting - for adding and removing paint. That's a whole new world for me. Until this week, I've usually only used a palette knife for mixing paint or, more often, cleaning my brushes - or, sometimes, deleting sections of paintings, or deleting entire paintings. I still have to tame the knife, but this property will offer me a lot of opportunities.

I was exhausted, mentally, when I got home. So I had some lunch and a nanna nap. Then I got up, had coffee and went back for more before sunset. I didn't have much time so I almost literally threw this one together...

Evening, winter.
Plein air sketch. 34x30cm oil on board.
© Andy Dolphin

There's just less than an hour's work here, and much of that time was spent on the two sheds. Actually, most of it was probably spent on the white shearing shed. So many shades of "white"!

When I put the brushes down, the sun had set and the entire scene was in shadow. But when I turned around, the sky was a brilliant orange-violet. Five minutes later, it was all gone.

It was great to have a day with mostly-clear skies.

City of Albany - plein air oil sketch

I was out and about on Friday, on what might be described as a perfect autumn evening, when I saw the City of Albany lit up by the light of the setting sun streaming between Mt Melville and Mt Clarence.

I threw my easel up, grabbed a primed board and went to work with some ultramarine, cadmium scarlet, cadmium yellow light and a little too much solvent.

I had about five minutes of good light, then about five minutes of not so good light and another five minutes of not really light at all.

I got this...

 (City of Albany evening. Plein air sketch. 30x20cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Here's a close-up of the sunlit "houses"...

Lone Karri - plein air landscape in oil

I headed down to Denmark on Friday to check out The Old Butter Factory.

The premises had operated as an art gallery for years until it closed down about two years ago. It has now re-opened as a cooperative art gallery featuring paintings and sculptures by a handful of Denmark artists. There's some beautiful work on view and you might even catch some sculpting in progress in the downstairs workshop.

If you're in Denmark (Western Australia), check it out.

After visiting the gallery, I took a drive out along Scottsdale Road and several other roads in the area that I just happened to turn down. The region from Denmark to Walpoloe is spectacular - and quite different to any other location in Western Australia.

Large rolling hills are a big part of what makes this area different but on top of this you get majestic karri trees and numerous creek lines. Roads wind their way through the farmlands and there is a lot of potential painting material along the way. The only difficulty is the lack of safe parking (or even standing room) exactly where you want it.

But I did eventually find a spot to park coupled with a view to paint. I wandered around for a while, checking out different vantage points before settling on one looking almost directly into the sun. The farms around here are bounded by mostly-remnant karri forest and most farms have old karris scattered throughout. This tree was set high on a hill, almost as if it was standing guard over the region. It was begging to be painted.

I completely forgot to take a location shot of the finished painting so you'll have to trust me that this is 100% plein air. Here's the painting as it stands.

(Lone Karri. Plein air sketch. 25x30cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Back in the studio, with the sun no longer threatening my retinas, I can see a few things that need adjusting to enhance and strengthen the overall composition. At the very least, it could use a bit of saturated warmth in the foreground. I may make the adjustments on the painting itself when it's dry enough, or I might use it as reference material for another painting.

Afternoon breaker - plein air seascape in oil

Green Islands, Albany. Photo by Andy Dolphin.

With the sun still shining, I threw my French easel, back pack, camera and bottle of cordial in the car and headed back to the Albany coast.

My back pack folds out to a stool (I stand when I paint though) and contains almost everything I need for plein air painting. It's a semi-organised mess but it carries rags, plastic bags, primed painting boards, colour charts, thinner, sketch book, pencils, hand wipes and sometimes a beanie to keep my head warm as evening falls. It has two side pockets that hold insect repellent, sunscreen and my bottle of drinking water - or cordial. It's handy having the drinking water in its own pocket so I don't reach into the back pack and end up grabbing and drinking thinner by mistake.

My SLR camera is too big and precious to go in the back pack so has its own shoulder bag. My paints and brushes are in the French easel.

Here's the result for this trip. First, the "proof I was there" location shot...

And the painting...

 (Afternoon breaker. Plein air sketch. 30x20cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

The photo at the top of the blog shows how things were looking as I was packing up. Spectacular, as always.

Rocky coast plein air oil painting

Green Islands, Albany. Photo by Andy Dolphin.

Date: Friday, November 9, 2012
Weather Forecast: Close to perfect!

I didn't get out much last week as it rained for seven days straight. I finally managed to get some painting done in the last couple of days though. Here's yesterday's effort.

This is a spot I've looked at many times but there's always been a reason not to paint it. It's high up on a cliff edge over rocks, exposed to the wind and is usually shrouded in heavy salt spray. And up until yesterday, the shadows always seemed to be in "just the wrong place". With summer just weeks away, the sun is now setting further to the south and the lighting down here was far more interesting.

(Down into the mist. Sketch. 30x25cm, oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I'm struggling to come to grips with painting the ocean while looking directly toward the setting sun but this one is better than previous efforts. In order to get it done as fast as possible, I used a limited palette and ignored detail. I was throwing paint on - although I was slowed down quite a bit because I'd left my palette knife behind and I use that for cleaning my brushes. Alternatives proved unsuccessful.

I'm happy with the result and can see a few things that need adjusting so I'm going to let this one dry then do a bit of work over the top to try an unify things and enhance the depth a little.

I might go back here a at different times and see what else I can get from it.

Bluff Knoll - plein air oil

It was very warm yesterday with clear blue skies in every direction. I took the opportunity to head inland looking for something to paint. With one month of spring to go, the paddocks are starting to lose their winter greens and take on the warm, dry colours of summer. I drove around for a few hours before ending up at Bluff Knoll, the highest peak in southwest Western Australia.

I painted here one morning a year ago (see Bluff Knoll) and in January this year (See Bluff Knoll in January) and while I was happy enough with the sketches I'd done on both occasions, I felt it was worth another go to try and capture the essence of the bluff.

By the time I'd set up my easel, there was only about half an hour left until sunset. I decided a thumbnail sketch was in order to ensure I knew where I was headed before the light changed too much.

I tried two formats, each sketch taking less than a minute. I decided that the vertical format gave me a better feeling of the towering nature of the mountain. I was particularly interested in the zig-zag line created where the major shadow area met the sunlit area. There's a very interesting piece of geology up there, where the sandstone forms a turret-like ridge that catches the sunlight, but it would fall almost dead centre in my picture so I couldn't make too much of it and decided, instead, to draw the eye up to the cliff face.

I quickly washed in my major shadow area with a mixture of ultramarine and crimson, thinned with low-odour mineral spirits. Then I assessed the colour of the sunlit areas. This is one of those confusing situations where you know the shrubbery on the mountain is green but the light shining on it leans strongly toward red - green's complement. So what colour is it now? It's a sort of red-green-yellow-orange-brown colour.

I used my handy-dandy oil colour chart to find a starting point and settled on a combination of cerulean blue (a green-blue), mixed with cadmium yellow deep (an orange-yellow) and added permanent crimson (a purple-red) to warm it up. I washed a mix of burnt sienna and permanent crimson on the sunlit area first to provide a warm, earthy base for this "green".

I approached this painting a little differently to how I usually paint on site. I didn't try to take any area toward a finished state and just laid in large areas of general colour until almost all the white primer was covered. I didn't even take these areas up to each other, at first. Once I had it all mapped in, I went back over all areas with heavier colour and closed all the gaps that I'd left in the early stage.

The shadows moved fast and I found the thumbnail sketch an invaluable map of where I was headed. You can see in the thumbnail that I'd noted a small patch of sunlight right at the top of the shaded cliff face. This highlight disappeared soon after I started painting so the sketch was a useful reminder to include it - and it is important to making that area interesting enough to look at.

I finished painting after sunset and had to use a small headlamp to see what I was doing as I added small flashes of colour to break up the large masses. I used a flash to take the location photo, above, just before I finished working on the painting.

Here's how things ended up with almost no work added in the studio...

 (Spring evening - Bluff Knoll. Plein air sketch.
25x30cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Plein air seascape - but wait...

...there's more!

Green Islands, Albany. Photo by Andy Dolphin.

Date: Saturday, September 15, 2012
Weather Forecast: Fine, partly cloudy.

There were large cumulus clouds building at home but I wanted to return to the bay where I painted yesterday and Thursday. I made the 60km (that's one-way), 45-minute trip to the coast around 3:30pm and when I arrived, the sky was clear - not a cloud to be seen.

I started painting later than usual today because I hoped to capture some of the warm evening light I'd seen as I was packing up yesterday. This takes a bit of planning and some assumption because the really warm light only lasts for about 10-15 minutes, at best, and that's not nearly long enough time to complete a half-decent seascape painting.

I added cadmium scarlet to my palette, along with ultramarine, burnt sienna, cadmium yellow light and a touch of viridian.

The cadmium scarlet found its way into most colour mixes, especially the misty background, but its major role was in the highlights, ensuring these would take on a warm, orange-red glow. I was careful to keep the viridian out of anywhere it wasn't needed.

Here's the location shot, taken after sunset.

Plein air seascape revisited

Green Islands, Albany. Photo by Andy Dolphin.

Date: Friday, September 7, 2012
Weather Forecast: Fine and warm.

With the stormy weather behind us, I returned to Torndirrup National Park on a rather sunny Friday afternoon. It was good to see that, despite the beautifully clear weather, there was still a good swell sending large waves into shore.

I set up in the same spot I'd been a few days earlier, when I painted my last plein air seascape. Friday was a similar day to last Sunday, except there were no clouds at all. The light was strong and there was a fairly thick haze which dropped the value of the distant ocean to the point where the horizon line was barely discernible early on (I visited there again yesterday evening and the haze was more incredible).

Standing in the same spot as before, and looking in the same direction, I naturally ended up with a very similar painting. But this time the light shining through the splash of the big waves was very evident so I chose to exploit that more than before.

I also focussed a bit more attention on the foreground rocks and chose not to cover them in water as I had last time. This leaves them looking like big lumps at the bottom of the picture but these are just studies, not finished paintings, so I'm not too concerned about that.

When I got back to the studio, I assessed my effort and felt I'd lost too much of the light in the splash and that the middle-ground was lacking energy.  I spent about 15-20 minutes touching things up with the paint that was still on my palette. While I was at it, I modelled the rocks a little more by throwing a little more light on the upper faces.

(Hazy Breaker. Sketch. 30x25cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Ultimately, I'll borrow elements from several of my recent plein air sketches and create one large painting that is true to the location but which, hopefully, also has a good solid design. For now I'm enjoying the experience of visiting the same place in different conditions and seeing what I can capture in paint while I'm there.

Next time I hope to pay more attention to the part of the wave to the left of the exploding foam and see if I can work out what on Earth is going on back there. I know it always seems chaotic.

Plein air seascape sketch

Green Islands, Albany. Photo by Andy Dolphin.

It's been a pretty bleak week, so far, weather-wise. Big storms were predicted for Monday and Tuesday and, while we were spared anything too nasty, there has been a lot of heavy rain and some fair gusts of wind (there was also a rumour of snow on the Stirling Range but I think it was a case of "blink and you miss it").

I'd hoped to go painting at Torndirrup on Monday afternoon but it was a wash-out and, along with the non-stop rain, it was far too windy to risk wandering around out there. I didn't even make the journey to see how things were looking.

I did manage to get out there yesterday afternoon (Wednesday), despite continuing rain, to witness the after-effects of the storms. I hung around taking photos and video for about 20 minutes but when I wasn't getting rained on, I was getting showered with salt spray! The sea was definitely pounding, but there was no chance any painting was going to happen. The photo above tells the story - it was amazing and miserable at the same time.

Here's the painting I did on Sunday, a very different day, as seen in my previous plein air seascape article.

(Heavy Seas. Sketch. 30x25cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I used a fairly limited palette of ultramarine, cerulean, permanent crimson, burnt sienna and cad yellow light. I wanted purplish shadows to complement the yellow light and the ultramarine and crimson delivered this. I needed the cerulean to capture the very clean green-blue in the foreground wave and in the splash - this colour was very evident during this session. Burnt sienna was on the palette as a time saver, so I could lay in some quick darks without messing around with mixing tertiary colours (ultramarine, crimson and yellow).

I threw the paint on in large patches: dark brown for the rocks, clean blue-grey for the foam area, dark green-grey for the open water and a warm yellow for the sky, with purply-greys worked into it for clouds. With the basic areas established, I added some general mid-tones to separate light from shadow. From this stage it was a matter of watching the ocean and adding and altering bits until I decided no more was needed. I painted for about one hour and quite a bit of that time was spent staring, waiting for the right shapes to "repeat" themselves

There's quite a bit to work work from here for a larger painting.

I'm hoping to get back there tomorrow and see what else this spot can teach me. Depending on conditions, and emotions, I might focus on the foreground rocks and see if I can tame them.

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.