Happy Place!

Having painted now over six weeks, I have worked on a series of pictures exploring local and not so local beaches. I have painted from photographs mostly, but now I can see a definite style emerging.

Acrylic allows for mistakes and change, and I am constantly lightening areas and repainting. Altogether I love seeeing how colours react to one another.

Keeping the brush stroke in a single movement defines the angle and layers the process.

Now I just want to explore more in this semi- abstract method. I’m hooked and it is changing how I view things. I’m constantly observing patches of colour, shapes and light.

My happy place!

A Summer Lament

Between the Showers Acrylic on Board ©️Ruth Partridge
Summer
like flowers fades
Days shorten
Time ebbs
Like the retreat of the tide
Memories are snatched 
with velocity
Desperate to eek out
Final afternoons
Impromptu walks
coffees drunk
In favourite cafes
With favourite friends
Wild swimming at any opportunity
Big skies
Open spaces 
Dogs running free
The chance to be ourselves
Until…
We pack 
Our lives neatly
Like clothes in cases
To begin again
In ordered fashion
Of timetable and routine. 
Lamenting what was
Holding the memory
Of Summer.


Late Summer

Straggly borders and faded flowers
Drawn through with tangled weeds
Like lampposts sunflowers
Lean to wind and rain
Zinnia spikes a sharp vermilion hue
Fighting  with soft pink of hollyhock juxtaposed
Yellow rudbeckia - too sharp
Note made
Straw coloured calendula floats
amidst a 
Hazy mist of cosmos
Heights and stature change
Grasses shower seed 
A profusion of tall perennials
The final flourish
Ending the firework display.

Learning to paint – a whole new adventure

Summer is practically the only time I can paint. I have to be in the mood and once there need to relinquish everything else as it becomes all consuming.

I booked myself on a two day course for the first time with South West Art back in Spring. I sourced a portable easel second hand as my studio one is too big. Excited by the prospect of painting en plein air, I counted and recounted my brushes and purchased the necessary acrylics, stashing them into my ancient box – wondering how one actually carries the equipment to the location.

Super excited, slightly nervous, I turned up to meet the other participants- all seasoned enthusiasts and professionals, all regularly exhibiting … and then there was me.

I wanted that course as I’ve known artist Phil Creek for years, professionally as art advisor for Devon Schools and more recently collecting his work, one of which he painted especially for us. I love his style ; I was keen to learn.

I may have been from the weakest starting point, yet in two days all I did was learn. I watched… I listened… I had a go.

The technique: One 1 in brush, no drawing. First layer simply make broad lines – no dabbing , single strokes , looking for blocks of colour and cover the page. Never paint like painting a wall – single strokes with same 1 in brush again over the first layer. Repeat the layers- use the brush on its side or tip for fine marks.

Layer one – unfinished study 20 mins
Second study – two layers 40 mins

Day 2 we learnt to draw people – just giving a suggestion all with 1 in brush then with rigger brush to finish. The idea is not to suddenly return to a detail style or the painting becomes confused, looking as though it has been done by another hand.

Figures – a study

En plein air was hard – the time, the weather, the crowds. We carried our load of equipment down to the beach. I was keen to see how others dealt with it – trollies, hold-alls and the like . Easel in one hand, box in the other and a rucksack, we ended up at the Ham, Sidmouth, looking at the cliff above which my grandparents lived. When I was seven, could I have ever envisaged that one day I would be back painting the view ?

Phil instructed and demonstrated everything first
Holidays by the Sea – Finished acrylic on board
View Towards Granny and Grandads Finished – acrylic on linen

Two days well spent.