Tree paintings #19 - near Bath

 

I'm afraid I don't remember for sure where the woodland above is - the scan is just labeled 'forest'! But I suspect it's in the Black Mountains, somewhere in the area of the 'Where's my Teddy?' Woods..

On the other hand, it looks a bit similar to the painting below, which I know for sure is a patch of woodland in the grounds of the American Museum in Bath. The gardens there are beautiful, as is the building and, being an 'on-and-off' quilter, I spent a quite blissful afternoon amongst the stupendous collection of quilts there. 

But, naturally, it was just an unpretentious little patch of trees that caught my eye....and of course, once again,  the patterns made by the sunlight and the shadows!

Tree Paintings #18 - back to Norfolk!

 

Back 'home' to Norfolk - I still miss it in some ways! - and in Foxley Woods, a reminder of what may not be too far off! I already have tulips and wallflowers joining the daffodils in my garden and this lovely Spring weather seems set to continue for a while at least!

And this one, the North Norfolk Coast at Wells-next-the-Sea, reminds me of what I love most about the Norfolk landscape- its wide open spaces and huge skies. And not a single mountain in sight to block the view!

Tree paintings #17 - Burgundy again

Even without the catalogue of mishaps, the canal holiday was disappointing.

We were living in Norwich at the time and Norfolk is well known for its 'Broads', a network of waterways resulting from the digging out peat for fuel in times past. The Norfolk Broads are alive with wildlife - and people; trippers on 'day boats', visitors to the area on guided tour boats, and people who are spending a week afloat, as we were in Burgundy. There are plenty of welcoming pubs along the banks, so there's no need to go off in search of a supermarket, as we had to in Burgundy. And a jolly good time can be had by all!

 

By comparison, the Burgundy Canal seemed totally dead! Beautiful scenery, row upon row of trees, but very few signs of life. Hardly any other boats and we scarcely saw a duck all week!

We only once found somewhere to eat by the canalbank and I think we must have been the first visitors in a long time as they seemed totally unprepared for us. When the meal finally arrived it was, of course, well worth waiting for and it was during the wait that I took more photos, this one of a pot of geraniums in the evening sun -

 

This painting, too, surprised me by being accepted for the Bath Summer Exhibition, so I managed to salvage something positive from an otherwise very stressful experience! 

Tree paintings #15 - Bruges

 

Another very hot Summer's day but this time across The Channel in Bruges, Belgium.

It was our first stop on a family holiday, travelling by ferry and car from Norwich to Burgundy, France, to start a week's boating holiday on the Burgundy Canal.

 

It's rare for me to paint landscapes in 'landscape' format but I seem to have made an exception once we crossed the English Channel, as you'll see tomorrow!

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.

Tree paintings #12 - Somerleyton Hall

 

Another example of where the trees, rather than the building, caught my eye and asked to be painted!

Somerleyton Hall, in Suffolk, is a fine example of a Tudor/Jacobean mansion, open to the public. But nowadays the grounds have been turned to good commercial use with holiday cottages and as a venue for weddings etc

Tree paintings #11 Gt Massingham, Norfolk

 

A few years ago, when I still lived in Norwich, I decided to go on a silent retreat! It was in the Autumn and it lasted from late afternoon on the  Friday until Sunday lunchtime. I think I went more out of curiosity than anything.

The retreat took place in a beautiful old country house in North West Norfolk, at Great Massingham. But unfortunately the style of the interior was very reminiscent of the boarding school where I spent my term-times from the age of 11 until I was 18. I say, 'unfortunately' because I didn't much like being at boarding school and worse still, one of the punishments for minor offences was a 'silent meal' and, for slightly more serious misdemeanours, we were given a 'silent bed', which meant that we weren't allowed to talk while we were getting ready for bed or during the fifteen minutes or so before the lights were put out. For a chatterbox like me that was horrendous.

So I spent the first evening at Great Massingham silently rebelling against the 'silence'! I slept very badly and woke early so I decided to get up and take my camera and explore the grounds before breakfast.

It was October and the morning was bright and frosty and the sun coming up made the colours of the fields and hedgerows breathtakingly beautiful, especially as I'm normally a 'night owl' and therefore quite a late riser!

 

My early-morning explorations took me into a small area of woodland, where I cheerfully clicked away with my camera. This was well before the age of digital cameras so I ran out of film! We had been told that it was OK to speak to the nuns about anything urgent and to me this was almost a crisis. So I rather nervously knocked on the door and asked if there was anywhere I could get more film for my camera. The nun was a lovely lady and she immediately whisked me off to the nearest village in her ancient Citroen 'deux chevaux' to stock up on film.

By that time I was more than happy with the silence and in fact, when it came to Sunday lunchtime and everyone started talking, I really didn't want to. It struck me that a lot of what we say to one another is of very little consequence and that we rarely really listen in any case!

What a difference a day had made!

 

Tree Paintings #9: Hereford and Brecon Cathedrals

I'm really surprised to discover how many trees I've painted!

I never thought of myself as a tree-painting person. But I can say with confidence that I'm not going to discover that I've painted many buildings in any kind of detail. In fact the painting above is entitled 'Hereford Cathedral' - but the magnificent old tree in front of it saved me from having to bother with all that architectural detail!

Brecon Cathedral is actually quite a distance from Hereford but I drove a visiting friend down there when I was still living in Hereford and this tree in the Cathedral Close is one of the two sketches that resulted:

The other one was of a clump of poppies growing by a corner of the ancient stone building....

......which is nowhere to be seen as far as my paintings are concerned!

Tree Paintings #8 - Pen-y-fal again

A different view of the trees I posted yesterday - and, judging by the light, later in the afternoon.

I think one of the things that attracts me to painting trees, in spite of my reservations about using too much green in my paintings, is the colour of the treetrunks.

When I was about 9 years old, I had my first male class teacher, which we all saw as quite an event! But there is only one thing I remember from the whole of that year in Mr D's class; it's an 'art' lesson where we were informed that we should not colour the trunks of trees brown. In fact we were offered a shilling - about the equivalent of a week's pocket money - if we could find a tree with a brown trunk.

Looking out now at my apple and pear trees, they do indeed have dark brown trunks and branches but I'm afraid it's too late to claim my shilling!

Tree paintings #7 - Pen-y-fal

 

Just a few minutes walk from my home is a winding and overgrown path along the bank of the little Gavenny (Y fenni) River, which flows into the River Usk in Castle Meadows, giving the town its name (Aber = mouth of, Gavenny = the name of the river). Soon after I took the photo for this painting, someone came and cut back the greenery and spread grey chippings on the path so I was glad I'd grabbed the opportunity before that happened!

There's a picturesque wooden bridge over the river which leads to ......a huge estate of houses about ten years old! They are built on land that belonged to an old hospital, known as Pen-y-fal, and parts of the old buildings have been made into apartments.

But just before the houses begin, there's a very small area that's been left untouched because it was a graveyard for the hospital. And that's where these two trees caught my eye and begged me to paint them! 

They remind me of a couple of young ballet dancers, arms outstretched and their feet in 5th position - what do you think?

Tree paintings #6 Goytre Wharf, nr Abergavenny

 

One of my favourite places to take visitors is the Brecon and Monmouth Canal at Goytre Wharf, just outside Abergavenny. 

There's a restaurant, a little museum and gift shop and sometimes there are special events for children laid on, with such treats as pond-dipping! But I just love to walk along the towpath where the boats are moored up and I've done several soft pastel paintings of the canal and the boats.

I was there with a friend one very hot August afternoon and it was wonderfully cool on the towpath but there's also a small area of woodland (above) between the main road and the canal, also very pleasantly shady on a swelteringly hot day!

I don't normally much like using a lot of green in my paintings so I don't know what happened in the painting of the towpath below but it's actually one of my favourites. It obviously also appealed to a man who worked for the Waterways and he bought the original at my first exhibition, in spite of the high price I put on it, and later ordered a print of it for a colleague's leaving present.

Brecon & Monmouth Canal Print/Poster. by helikettle

Tree paintings #5 Black Mountains Forest, nr Abergavenny

 

This is one of my few rather dark and gloomy tree paintings. It's part of the same forest that covers the steep-sided valley that I described yesterday and on the map it's called the Mynydd Du Forest - the Black Mountain Forest and it certainly does look pitch black as you enter it.

But we always refer to it as the 'Where's my Teddy Woods' ever since my toddler grandson kept looking up at the trees and repeating 'Where's my Teddy?' We eventually twigged that one of his favourite bedtime stories was called 'Where's my Teddy?' and that there is a somewhat similar wood somehow involved in the story! Such is the impact of the illustrations in children's picture books!

More recently my son and I went for a 'walk' up through the forest but it's very steep and slippery underfoot so when we came to a proper track that circled the mountain horizontally, I was much relieved and there were some stunning views where the trees cleared.

However, after a while we realised that the path was not leading us back down in a circle to my car, which was parked down by the river but in the opposite direction. I would have happily gone back by the way we came but that was too boring for my son and he set off straight down the mountainside with me following as best I could.

I was not dressed for this sort of adventure as we were planning to have lunch at the Skirrid Inn after our walk; it was very wet and slippery so I was also a bit worried about spraining an ankle and as my son isn't insured to drive my car and of course there is no mobile signal out there, that could have been tricky! But I survived, apart from travelling down some of the distance on my backside and having to make sure I kept my back to the wall at the inn because my best trousers were so muddy from the slide!

I've heard that the SAS train in that area but I've never spotted them. Perhaps they were hiding behind the trees. It's not hard to imagine!

Tree Paintings #1 Queenswood, Herefordshire

Last night I was doing my usual round-up of the blogs I follow when I had an idea! 

I'd reached Nicki Ault’s blog and I’ve sometimes noticed a similarity between  her choice of subject matter and that of some of my soft pastel paintings, though I’d never particularly thought of myself as a ‘tree’ person. So I had a look through the low-resolution thumbnails of my old, defunct soft pastel painting website and was surprised to see just how often trees are, in fact, an important part of what I call my ‘proper paintings’.

Forests and woodlands have been in the news here recently as the government has done a U-turn in response to the huge public outcry against selling them off! Some say the government never intended to go through with it and used it to show that they are flexible and listen to the people. (It didn't apply to Wales in any case as we are 'devolved'). There’s some information here and do watch the (soundless) video! I thought it was hilarious, particularly the chap to the right who appears to keep nodding off at about 17 secs in!

So, by way of celebration of the protesters' victory, I thought it might be appropriate to post one of my many tree paintings on the days in between my regular posts, rather like Diana Ting Delosh’s daily bunny postings earlier this month.

The trees above are part of the Queenswood, in Herefordshire, which covers the top of a hill between the county town of Hereford, where I lived for four years, and Leominster in the north of the county. Leominster (pronounced Lemster!) is an attractive little town and I originally intended to move there – but in the end, Abergavenny won, partly because it is easier for my family to get here.