Painting in the New Year

A Happy and Healthy New Year to you all.

It's been a very quiet holiday, made even more peaceful, by the thick blanket of snow that we have been under for over a week now.

Thick fluffy snowflakes have turned the landscape into a palette of whites, greys and blues. It's been truly inspiring and urged me outdoors to try and capture that beauty in paint.

Five Sisters on the shores of Loch Duich. Ice forming on the surface of the salt water loch and on the shore.

However the ink and watercolour end up freezing and my paint brushes get clogged with flakes of ice. The effects on the paper can be quite interesting though as the colour forms into crystals.

Working in my sketchbook , to decide on compositions for bigger paintings back in my studio.

The top painting melted away to nothing when I got back home. Too much water used I think. I worked on the bottom painting though, which turned into the painting below.

Ratagan Youth Hostel in the Snow.

Enjoying this limited palette, I have just completed the painting below which I am quite excited about. Very muted colours and the faint suggestion of the mountains as they disappear behind a snow shower make this composition very subtle. I have enjoyed combining washes of ink along with a very soft 10B graphite pencil to suggest the mountains in the distance. The river leads the eye into the painting with more detail and darker tones.  I used a pastel pencil to coax the stones out of the inky washes, adding highlights of light grey pastel to show the snow capped tops.

Untitled as yet, the icy river flowing down into Loch Duich. Mixed Media Painting.

I feel I want to try and explore this subtle approach again. Let's see what happens.

Although it may look like there's not much to it, I spent a lot of time thinking and deciding what to leave be and what to adjust and enhance, to make the image work as a whole.

It's a case of handing some of the control over to the medium, ie. the inks and then using the way they land and merge on the paper to my advantage. Some things are best left to the inky gods !

Until next time , I hope you enjoy a slow paced January.

Thanks for reading and all best wishes from

Helen