Lake District watercolours

Paintings are funny things, you know? You paint them for yourself, because the process of painting them does something to you, and something for you, but then for a lot of us the first thing we want to do is send them off on their own into the world. Send them to live with other people to do something for them, something to them. If you’re lucky.

I’ve decided these two paintings need to go and find their own way in the world. I painted both of them in the Lake District, in northern England. They’re both watercolours, both painted from work done in the fresh air and sunshine (en plein air, as people say, who think that using French phrases will make them sound better than they are 😊).

The barns were done from a drawing I did on a camping trip with my eldest son. He was busy with a fishing net in his wellingtons, dipping around Ullswater, and I sat on a rock with a drawing book and a pencil and sketched the formal angles of the buildings, but looked closely at the informal bubbles and pops, craggy corners and lichen-covered stones of the walls and trackway. I painted the picture on getting home, and have been very pleased with it ever since. It was in fact intended as a sketch from which to do an acrylic canvas, but I think the watercolour got it. I might do the acrylic one day.

The picture painted near Buttermere was done start to finish in front of the scene, again sitting on a rock. The light on the hills was so beautiful, the breeze in the trees cooling and refreshing. I like to paint in public. I like when people stop to look and watch. Chatting to strangers when you’re painting is like busking – it’s an interaction with people gathered around what you’re doing as an artist. Sometimes you think what you are doing is terrible, and you go home with a painting that you would never show anyone, but invariably people tell you it’s great. It’s lovely.

I hope these two find homes. Like kids growing up and leaving home, you try and find the best place for them to set them on their way.

Barns - http://ow.ly/jeHm30bCWlc

Buttermere - http://ow.ly/T08030bCWpw