Tuesday 21 February 2017

Travels in Lanzarote Day 13: the Volcano Park


We were driving through the volcano park in the south west of the island. This is a stunning place, where every turn in the road reveals yet more shapes, colours and textures. 


I was desperate to get out and paint, so John pulled up and I sat beside the car on my little stool, with my A3 sketchbook on my lap:


I spent most of my time on the one above. The sun was going down fast, so I was about to call it a day when I changed my mind, did an about-face, and painted another, really quick, instinctive sketch of the view behind me:



I was really pleased with the gestural, abstracted way the lava in the foreground worked. Hope you agree!

6 comments:

molon said...

Loving your sketches. Would love to learn more about the circular palette and the colours you are using. Thanks.

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thank you.

I don't have any special colours - fairly standard palette, with Cerulean Blue and Prussian Blue added, and mostly Windsor & Newton. The palette itself is a Frank Herring one. I love it. You can find them online :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Lynne, My response is a big "Yes!," to your question about the abstraction of lava in foreground. Whenever I visit your blog I eagerly look for the nature sketches. To my eyes you are such a master of leaving white space -including here in this lava abstraction. I realize that comes with experience... but, would you care to share any thoughts on how you developed that particular skill?
Best regards,
Karen

Lynne the Pencil said...

Thank you so much.

I have got better and better at instinctive painting over the last 3 or so years, but I suppose I have been interested in drawing that way for much longer. I find that it happens quite naturally when I am painting quickly, but is harder to achieve when I am taking my time and thinking too much.

It's more about practise than anything else though. I noticed the difference in my technique after my year as artist in residence at the Morgan Centre, because I was doing rapid observational painting for a couple of days each week, all day solid. Practise gradually loosens you up, if you let it.

One other thing that helps is a good brush. I began my sketch-paintings using a waterbrush, but you can't get such exciting marks. Now I use a dagger made by Rosemary & Co, which is a perfect natural / synthetic mix to give me lovely springy, flicky marks.

Anonymous said...

Hi Lynne,

Thanks s much for your reply to my inquiry about leaving white space!

"Practise gradually loosens you up, if you let it."
--That's a helpful observation! Now that I reflect on it, I can see that in my quest to leave white areas I have become tighter, less spontaneous. Probably a result of being too deliberate, too analytical in the quest for that effect -- which clearly is counter productive, because the white areas that I admire in others' work is always left by loosely applying the paint! Thanks again.

And yes, I do know what you mean about the limitations of a waterbrush.

Karen

Lynne the Pencil said...

So glad that helped Karen. Think about the marks more than the areas of colour and the white does kind of take care of itself ;-)