Some Recent Paintings

Loch Lochy

Sketching has taken a back seat recently ( as has this blog) because work has been very busy. However I have completed a few paintings which I have posted here.
 The weather has been colder this winter than we normally experience on the west coast and there have been  some glorious bright frosty days with the mountains looking very alpine. The ice climbers and skiers have had a very good season. Last Thursday I went up Ben Nevis in beautiful weather, although the top was in cloud .The ruins of the observatory were completely buried and the summit cairn which sits on a rock pedestal about 12 foot high was only just poking out of the surface of the snow.

 I find it far more pleasant climbing the Ben in the snow because my knees get less of a battering on the way down. In fact going down was very quick as I was able to glissade ( ie slide on my bum using an ice axe to control speed) down some sections- great fun but cold when you are wearing shorts! I took lots of photos which I hope to paint  soon. I avoided the last section of the tourist path by taking the path to the right of the Half Way Lochan and down to Torlundy.

Loch Lochy from the A82


Loch Eil from Torlundy.

Small Paintings

Today I've been painting some small ( 14cm x 9cm) pictures for sale at The Gallery In The Fort; a small gallery in town. Here is a selection.

Loch Arkaig

Loch Lochy

The North Face of Ben Nevis

Loch Linnhe

The loch pictures are all similar in composition but the fun bit is painting the skies and  the reflections in the water. Painting small pictures allows some experimentation with techniques without the risk of ruining a large painting .

Ben Nevis

Ben Nevis from The Mooring's Hotel

This weekend has been glorious weather. Yesterday I went for a run from the Ben Nevis Centre intending to go up to the Half Way Lochan then across to the Allt a Mhuilinn and up to the C.I.C hut .In the event  it was so nice that I continued up Ben Nevis . There was thick snow underfoot but it was  very warm in the sun . Three quarters of the way up the zig zags Helen phoned saying that she was heading up to the C.I.C. hut to meet me, so I went back.down. It was fun descending through the snow ; so much nicer than the bone jarring rocky path in the summer.
 As soon as I turned the corner beyond the lochan into the deep shadow cast by the North Face the temperature plummeted. At this time of year there is often a steep snow bank covering the path. Not having  brought  my ice axe I bypassed this by descending  and crossing the stream  to the east side of the glen.The stream was very cold! I met Helen and we ran back to the ski centre together.

Today I went for a low level run to Gairlochy , along the Caledonian Canal to  Banavie along the road to Torlundy then back home through the forest. We stopped at the Mooring's Hotel which is one of my favourite sketching haunts. I never tire of painting Ben Nevis from there.

Return Of Daylight

After months of running to and from work in the dark I was thrilled to see the first glimmers of sunrise as I reached Fort William one morning last week.
 I don't mind runnng in the dark as such - Running along in the pitch black (and often lashing rain and wind), hood up, music or radio on, head torch illuminating a small patch  of ground in front of you ( hopefully  enough to allow one to dodge deep puddles, slippy cow dung or cows themselves lying  on the track) is strangely comforting. One feels cocooned by the darkness.If there is a good programme on radio 4 I can be transpoted to another world, leaving my legs to dutifully trudge through the miles. Whereas one might think that running 10 miles in the dark and cold would be physically hard there can be a sense of sensory deprivation; the rain and the wind (muffled by ear phones, hat and hood) presenting little in the way of auditory stimulation, and the intense blackness of the night rendering anything but the patch of rain studded light from the head torch invisible. Sometimes,but rarely in cloudy wet Lochaber the sky is clear - then one is dazzled by the moon and the stars, a beautiful aerial display marred only by the light pollution from Fort William. More often ones surroundings are a uniform black.
But now all that is about to change ! The days are rapidly getting longer. Yesterday on the run to work I coud clearly see the Ben Nevis through the gloom . Soon there will be proper daylight and birdsong - time to ditch the head phones and enjoy the dawn chorus!
In addition to this we have been having some lovely crisp cold weather  recently .The top picture is from a photo I took on the road to Arisaig last week . Below that is another sketch of Ben Nevis fom Banavie

Gas Station challenge

Last Sunday I painted the petrol station at Carr's corner near Fort William in order to enter James Gurney's gouache competition. The challenge was to paint a gas station in  black and white gouache only . Not my normal subject matter but I managed to sneak some hills into the background ( Ben Nevis and  Melantee )  . I found it quite difficult  firstly painting in black and white secondly the gouache which was only my second attempt in the medium and also painting the cars which kept driving off !
Needless to say there were some brilliant entries so my picture didn't get anywhere. You can see the winners on gurneyjourney on Wednesday's post.

More sketches from this week

The Ben from Inverlochy -early morning

I was disappointed by the picture above when I did it. I had half an hour to spare after getting the bus to town - I still have a sore back and am meant to be tapering for a race so have not been running to work this week. I  have wanted to paint the view from the bridge between Inverlochy and An Aird for a while and this was the perfect morning for it . Clear blue sky , beautiful reflections in the millpond calm river , deep shadows and a hint of mist at the base of the Ben. However I couldn't get the washes to flow properly . I think possibly that it was so warm that the paint was drying too quickly - this very rarely happens in Lochaber so I wasn't prepared for it ! However I took a photo on my 'phone and have since worked on the picture with pens and watercolour pencils and am now quite pleased with it.

View north from the Localine Road

These two pictures are very quick sketches done on a trip to Lochaline yesterday When I say quick the bottom one was a matter of scrawling an impression with watercolour pencils then adding some water with a waterbrush  before the ferry left - 2 minutes tops!

From the Corran ferry before departure.

A Good Week For Sketching

It's strange how one week I don't seem to get time to sketch and the next lots of opportunities arise . It shows the value of always having a sketchbook or at least a pen and paper on your person as you never know when you will have a spare 5 minutes. This week I actually have a backlog of sketches to upload. The dry weather persisted until Thursday and there were dark mutterings among the farmers about a drought but then it started to rain heavily and it has hardly stopped since. Yesterday we also had a small earthquake in Fort William ( according to the T.V. news ) but I'm ashamed to say I didn't notice.

View from town centre car park

Pap of Glencoe and Loch Leven

View from the cemetery- this and the next sketch could do with some extra work at home

North face of Ben Nevis on a dull day

 The first two sketches were in  my Moleskine watercolour sketchbook the last two on a hot pressed Arches block. I normally use rough Arches paper but I've run out so resorted to a smooth  hot pressed block . The paint flows in a different way which takes a little getting used to.

Some quick sketches

I painted a  two quick sketches on the way home tonight. Cloud was billowing over the Ben and Aonach Mor and was rapidly changing in the evening light. Patches of blue sky were still in evidence but there was an amazing range of clouds varying in colour from fluffy white through cream ,dark blue and almost black. When I started the first Ben Nevis was partly visible but soon completely disappeared under shifting cloud.

Ben Nevis partly obscured by cloud.

Aonach Mor

The Ben

My chest has slightly improved since the weekend but I'm still not up to running  . Last night I used the car to get home and stopped off to sketch  Ben Nevis . It was a glorious evening and the mountains were simply stunning . I painted this from the car park of the local school - what a view for the children to have! A sketch does little to convey the grandeur of the scene or show the richness of the colours . In the evening sunlight the hues were changing from minute to minute as well. Still a sketch in my opinion is far superior to a photo as it necessitates connection and involvement with the scene, one has to really look, rather than just clicking a shutter passively.I have thousands of mountain photos on my computer. For speed and convenience a camera cannot be surpassed for recording beautiful views yet for  many of those pictures I would struggle to name the location yet alone the time and circumstance of the photo. With a sketch I can always remember the day and place and my mood when I executed it, even if that sketch was done 30 odd years ago. Today we are so tuned in to film and photos as conveying true reality that we don't realize what they miss out. How many times whilst running to work have I been overawed by the beauty of morning sunlight on the snow clad slopes of the Ben, whipped out my phone to snap the scene and been disappointed by the tiny sliver of light representing the mountain and dark  foreground devoid of detail. In reality on such an occasion the Ben explodes on your consciousness with stunning beauty, in the photo it is nondescript. In a painting you can attempt to express that impression of the scene and even if you lack the time or skill to do so you still have the memories of the attempt. Even a brief shoddy sketch actually records more information for the sketcher - by being a link to those impressions and memories- than the photo does.

Oak tree at Spean

Very rough sketch of an oak near Spean Bridge - not my best effort. I would really like to do a proper study of some of these magnificent trees - the more you look the more detail and different colours you see . There were many more greens than browns in the bark. Maybe the most important aspect of sketching is that it forces you to look and appreciate the world rather than  the end result which is inevitably a poor representation of reality.It's the process that's important , the picture is just an aide memoir of the atmosphere and feeling of the day. Below a quick sketch of the Ben from Torlundy with the summit wearing its normal cap of cloud.

Spring day on the West Highland Way

Tuesday was a complete contrast to Sunday - warm and sunny . I ran along the West Highland Way almost as far  as Kinlochleven and back. The above is Ben Nevis from the forest . Below is the dramatic profile of Stob Ban from the Lairig Mor

On Tuesday I had a day off and ran into town via Allt a' Mhuilinn and the CIC hut. I stopped to do a watercolour sketch of the valley and the cliffs of the north face of the Ben. It was quite cold so I didn't have long before my hands became to numb to paint. After that I traversed around on the path to the Half Way Lochan and then went up beyond the Red Burn to the zigzags . I was tempted to go to the top of the Ben but I wasn't well equipped and I  had things to do in town . The views below the cloud base were amazing as ever . I'm so lucky to live in such a breathtaking area , even a simple trip to town can take in demanding and dramatic mountain routes! Unfortunately my poor old knees were complaining on the descent on the tourist path so needless to say afterwards I jogged home through the forest.

Yesterday we ran from the Braveheart car park to Kinlochleven and back.For once it was a nice day and hardly rained at all. The Mamores looked magnificent with a good coating of snow. We met some friends just before Kinlochleven who were running from Tyndrum to Fort William - we were happy with 28 miles  rather than 43! Today we had an easy day H helped out with a race up to the vitrified fort whilst I sat in the car and  painted the above picture. After an initial heavy shower of rain the sun came out. The view is of the south side of the Ben from Glen Nevis I use my A4 moleskine watercolour sketchbook. I'm not sure if the moleskine paper is as well suited to the larger size sketchbooks- it doesn't hold layers of washes very well overlying ones  push the lower layers out of the way. However it is probably just a case of getting used to the paper and adapting one's technique accordingly
Over the years I have used a variety of sketchbooks. I used to like the smaller moleskine notebooks ( not the drawing sketchbooks which have a coating which doesn't hold washes well). The notebooks have thin paper which can take light washes and are good for ink, I quite like the charm of these little sketches:

The originals of the above are 14cm by 9cm.
More recently I have used watercolour moleskines of the same small size.

At the moment my favourite is the A5 Moleskine watercolour books however I did have a Strathmore sketchbook with  grey toned paper which I loved using especially with watercolour pencils.