Evening Light, Groby Pool, Leicestershire

I haven't been able to get out much to sketch because of the cold and its effect on my arthritis :>( and life getting in the way. Spring isn't too far away though :>)

But I have been out taking photos and plan to take a lot more. I especially love the light in the early morning and evening - it's so much more interesting, the skies are too.

These were taken at a local pool, a flooded ancient slate quarry. The sunset was subtle rather than dramatic but the light and soft colour was absolutely beautiful, with the skeletal winter trees silhouetted against the soft colour, the sheen on the water luminous.



So my new year resolution is to get on with a series of local landscapes - of course particularly those including water :>) - working from life and occasionally from photos like these.

On the other side of the water is an old 15C manor house with links to the Grey family of Jane Grey the 9 days Queen fame.

I bought a second hand pocket camera from a friend who was upgrading and I'm delighted with it (used for these). It means I can keep it almost permanently in my bag for all those times when the light/colour is special like this. (It's so annoying how often the most spectacular views happen when you are on a fast road with no hope of stopping!) I love my big camera but it can't be carried everywhere, all the time, this will fill that gap nicely and still has aperture priority/manual etc etc options and a 5x zoom for creativity :>)

I've also discovered a place I want to go back to for sketching with a high viewpoint over the canal in rolling countryside. The canal comes up a hill to the market town of Market Harborough via Foxton locks, with its long flight of locks enabling boats to come up a steepish hillside. The view I'd like to work from is further along, though at some point I should work here as well.

Old slate quarries, water, reflections and woods

update on the waterways project: Vivien

I've been looking at those old flooded slate quarries and the reflections in the water. We've had some lovely spring weather and the sky was a vivid blue so the water was too :>)

3 of these are of the little quarry near Swithland Woods. It's on private land so it's impossible to get different viewpoints. The reeds and tangled branches against the blue water are Groby Pool, a much larger ex-slate-quarry that has been dammed and is a lovely wild life reserve.

I'm really enjoying these and with the warmer weather hope to get out and do more sketching as soon as possible.

The coloured pencil one is too 'tight' I prefer the watercolour and I'm planning a 40 inch square canvas of those calligraphic reeds and branches against the rippling blue water of Groby Pool.

I've just come back, exhausted, from a very good exhibition of watercolours at the Mall Galleries in London - well worth visiting, with some lovely inspirational pieces. Also some naff ones and good paintings spoilt by truly AWFUL framing but lots of interesting stuff in a very diverse range of styles and concepts.

Charnwood Forest

carbon pencil sketch, detail, Vivien Blackburn

This is a detail of a sketch of that flooded quarry shown in my last post - you can see the whole sketch here

Carbon pencil isn't something I use very often as it isn't easy to get soft greys. This image called for intense blacks though and it worked quite well. I don't know what I've done with my little battery operated eraser so none of the drawing is done by drawing back into the darks with an eraser - my normal way of working.

Because the water level is high (it's very deep) and the rocks off to the left were in shadow, it wasn't possible to see any detail in the rocks. I concentrated on the reflections, tangled patterns and the assymetric arrangement of lights and darks .

It's on a rich cream cartridge paper (A4) that's very hard to scan and colour match.

I like cream paper to draw on - it isn't as stark as white - how about you?