A Spring Landscape Colour Palette

I've never been drawn to the colours of the typical spring landscape.

Years ago - probably nearly half a century ago! - I'd paint little water colours of the countryside in winter with fingers almost too cold to hold my paintbrush. And the landscape colours of late summer holidays driving down through France have been know to get my creative juices flowing. 

But springtime? No - the colours of fresh green sprouting buds are just too acidic for my liking, strangely cold and harsh compared even to the winter colour palettes. However, here's an interesting spring colour palette - yes there are a couple of sharp, bright colours - the lemon yellow and the neon green.

So why do I quite like this photo of the park that I cross every time I go shopping, in spite of those bright greens and yellows? 

It's probably because those brilliant colours are offset by some wonderfully mellow tones, especially the colours of the copper beech trees that are more reminiscent of autumn. So that harsh, bright green and 'aggressive' yellow are just accent colours balanced by the more muted, subtle tones all around them. And that way, I find them less aggressive!

But even so, if I were using this palette for an interior or for an outfit or a pattern, I think I'd choose just one of the bright accent colours and it would probably be the green. In fact the six colours on the right-hand side could make a good combination, as could the whole of the top row . . .

Which ones would you choose?

A Snowy Colour Palette for January

Even a light dusting of snow was enough to make the Smiley
face that overlooks Bailey Park, perfectly clear to see!

Some people insist that snow is white.

I suppose that's true - technically! But when an artist paints a snow-scape, all sorts of colours other than white somehow seem to appear, almost as if by magic!

For example, here is one of my pastel paintings of snow from quite a few years ago. I always try to put down exactly what I see and here I must have seen pinks, blues and purples in the shadows and warm, 'creamy' whites where the low winter sunshine streams through the trees. 

Snowy track at Whitecastle - soft pastel painting from a photograph

(Click here  for a blog post from way back, that includes some snow paintings by famous painters, such as Monet.)

We've had very little of 'the white stuff' down here in Abergavenny, so far this winter; though at times the peak of Sugarloaf has been gleaming brightly in the sunshine, aspiring to outshine the Matterhorn, no doubt.

But a few winters ago, we did have a significant snowfall, enough to make venturing forth with a camera worthwhile. And this photo is still one of my favourites, because of all the different colours the low winter sun revealed as it did its best to penetrate the trees in the park.

And, interestingly, I think there are as many 'warm' colours in this snowy palette as 'cool' ones!

I've sometimes heard people say that the first thing an artist must do is 'learn how to see'. 

I'm not sure about that. I can't ever remember 'learning to see' or anything like that. But I do think it makes life more interesting, not just for artists, if we can sometimes take the time to notice the shapes and the colours all around us, even in things we see so often that we take them for granted. 

Taking photos is easy nowadays: most of us have a digital camera or a smartphone. So why not make a point of noticing the surprising colours  - and shapes  - in your everyday surroundings. And if you can, take a photo and post it on the social media with the hashtag: 

#CelebrateTheEveryday

(you may even discover, as I have, that your everyday surroundings are so fascinating, that expensive holidays/vacations lose some of their attraction!)

Summer came early!

Bailey Park, Abergavenny, April 8th

Yes, I know we English are known for our partiality to discussing the weather, but the past few weeks really have been extraordinary!

Most of  March was sunny and warm - sitting-outside-in-shirtsleeves weather! - and the driest month for 50 years, apparently. When the month ended with a few days of wind and rain, I thought it was 'going out like a lion' and that we'd revert to our normal, less than wonderful, British weather. 

But no, we've been enjoying almost wall-to-wall sunshine and daytime temperatures that should belong at the end of May, even though it seems such a short time ago that we were comparing the depth of our snow on Twitter! It looks as if it's on the change now, though and maybe that was our summer?

Bailey Park, Abergavenny, 8th April

 
Most of the daffodils are long gone and dead-headed and these tulips in the park won't last much longer so I 'snapped' them on my way back from shopping on Friday.

So now I think I've posted images of the park that I cross to go shopping in all seasons.

Bailey Park, Abergavenny, 8th April

But here's the big shock!

I opened my back door to the garden a couple of mornings ago and, just outside, I found this!

Iceland Poppy, early April, 2011

The back of the seed packet says that it should start flowering in June, but this is one from last year that survived the record low winter temperatures - although you can see that the pot was less hardy! - so maybe that, as well as the remarkable weather, is why it is flowering so early?

Meanwhile, I've sown some Icelandic Poppy seeds, hoping that I might be lucky and get some pink ones. But the seeds are tiny and have germinated in clumps so I'm afraid a great many of them will have to be discarded. That's something I don't feel very comfortable doing - I have a book called, 'Plants are like People' and I tend to agree!  

I've also spotted buds on several of my roses and I have the feeling that I shall soon be working on photographic images for my greeting cards etc rather than drawings and paintings. Last summer was like that and the poppies were an especially fruitful source of designs. The one above featured on coffee mugs and even Keds shoes as well as greeting cards - as you can see here.

Tree paintings #14

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I don't actually much like this pastel painting of the avenue of trees that lines my path across the park to the shops. I think the 'green' is too predominant for my liking.  

But as I've often mentioned my route to the town and posted photos of the trees in Autumn and in Winter, I thought I might as well include a Summer view.

Somehow, I'm much happier with this one - the view of Sugarloaf from that path on a Summer evening - and the greeting cards I made from it have been very popular locally.