Outer Hebrides painting work in progress

I have been working my way through the wealth of inspiration I found since returning from our 3 week adventure around some of the islands of the Outer Hebrides.

There was so much colour, texture and mood to capture.

I did try to work on site but found either the rain or the cramped cab conditions in the camper van a real challenge.

So most of my work has been done from photographs and sketchy sketches back home in the studio where conditions can be controlled!

I loved the colour palette of the Uist islands the best from all the islands we visited (I did a little write up of that in a previous post somewhere) – peaty brown, pink and burgundy – yum.

The beaches are legendary and with good reason too.

Lots of cloud and sky with beautiful delicate hues and fluffly clouds. Sometimes the weather changes very quickly and so stormy indigo blue clouds can roll in very quickly.

All of which makes this watercolour painter very happy.

Granada

Back in August of last year we holidayed in Spain and I posted about it here. I love to travel to new places most particularly because of the new inspiration it brings for paintings and designs and I love to record it all.

However I have analysed myself and realised that I take so many photos and document everything that the quantity of the following work can be too over whelming to begin, and so I don’t. And/or I leave to too long and the moment’s passed and the inspiration is stale and goes to waste.

So I have been determined to change this pattern and have been working away at Spanish inspired things in between other work and commitments and I’d like to share and record it here. So seven months later here’s some of my holiday snaps and the work its inspired.

We began with a week in Granada which in itself is a lovely city (can only vouch for the old part as we never went any further) It has all the old buildings and culture that you’d want plus a young beating heart  – it mixes the two well. I was also surprised to find all the same things in shops that we’d bartered for in Marrakesh but sold without the stress here!

 Granada is very hilly and the payoff for a hike is the view. I happen to love a roof top view or one where the land looks thrown out like a patchwork quilt.

 I used acrylics for this piece and was trying to match my joy of the place with my experience of painting it – sometimes I try too hard and loose the essence. So I layered it up letting colours show through and applied a Fauvist approach by turning up the saturated colours next to the cool ones.

I kept a painterly and patterned approach because that’s what I saw looking out over all those geometric shapes and loved every minute of making this because it was joyful to make once I’d released myself from any photorealistic necessity.

Once I got going I couldn’t stop at one – I’ll show you the other one tomorrow.