Painting Holidays in Chateaux in Dordogne and Provence, France Provence 2021plein-air painting – Le Cingle de Limeuil, Dordogne
Posted on May 23, 2011
‘Le Cingle de Limeuil’
Cingle = meander in the river Dordogne at Limeuil.
‘Le Cingle de Limeuil’
plein air painting
WIP : Le Cingle de Limeuil, Dordogne
Posted on May 17, 2011
‘Le Cingle de Limeuil, Dordogne’
ETAPE …. En Progres …
Oil on Canvas
65 x 54cm (approx 25,5 x 21,5 inches).
© The Artist.
Le cingle = the meander of the dordogne at Limeuil
FINISHED STATE
ETAPE FINALE
HOMAGE À CÉZANNE
Too much like Cézanne? Ahh maitre Cézanne, you who have given me so much? It sometimes seems to me that even the farmers plough their fields as if by your hand,. Your vision has helped shape the vision of many artists, including myself, who followed on behind you. It was by looking at some your many ‘half-finished’ paintings – works in progress – that I partly leant to oil paint.
Work in progress by Cézanne
WIP : compositional sketch & tonal ‘notan’
Posted on May 16, 2011
I’ve been working on a large oil painting these last three weeks. A commission. It’s 130 x 81 cm – approx 51 x 32 inches. Bigger than my usual size. Good to be doing something different. A lot of work, which I’ll post as WIPs (work in progress) here. Thank you for all your comments. So many of them, makes me feel that internet is full of readers who care…
Large plein-air paintings require extra attention at the planning & conception stages, especially if they are a commission ie take into account of the customer’s wishes of what is to be included in the painting.
Here is the composition sketch:
I always do one of these for every painting. Knowing what goes where is a big big relief. Which takes the stress off somewhat so one can just concentrate on the painting, and panic less about the composition. Doing one of thee is visual thinking & can’t be replaced by assuming an intellectual idea of what goes where is enough. Note how it’s a ‘plastic’ process. The framing grows or shrinks to fit. Look & see how the frame lines go on last of all. I even had to fit on an extra page so as to make the size of the sky fit. Actually I went for a longer panorama in the end & not the more rectangular format of the above compositional sketch. The point is that my mind was now more orientated towards the painting & possibilities of how it might unfold.
The next stage is the tonal sketch. A ‘notan’. I say notan cautiously because a pure notan is in fact, a sketch for Japanese wood cut engravings aka Hokusai & not all the lovely subtle graduations of one tone washing into the other that you can get in watercolour. The point is to work out:
- where are the major blocks of light & dark?
- where is the centre of interest ie where do you want the eye to go to?
- where is the light source?
- what quality of light?
- what is the incline of the sunlight?
You can click on the notan & tonality categories on the side of this page to read more.
Spring Greens – WIP : Large Plein-Air Oil
Posted on May 4, 2011
This is a commission 🙂
It’s great to be doing a large plein-air oil again 🙂 It will take several more sessions on site & several more back in the studio. Way bigger than usual, so good to be working ‘out of the habitual box’. Tables & studio easel outside, on the edge of a step slope. lol, the buzzards were just waiting for this… beware whilst stepping back 😉
Here it is at the lay-in phase. Because there was just so much more drawing than in a normal size, I did something that I don’t usually do. That is I didn’t lay-in the sky right from the beginning & key everything to it right from the outstart. I do however know what lighting conditions will be more or less in the final painting.
130 x 80 cm ( approx 51 ” x 32″)
oil on canvas
© adam cope
And here is a zoom-in on the bright spring greens, so bright here in the south of France. Again at the lay-in stage:
I find myself remembering a bright spring green painting from May 2007 ( a few weeks on from now), a small scale plein-air alla prima :
Life’s a Beach
Posted on April 22, 2011
bright spring yellows – Matisse on shock
Posted on April 12, 2011
12 paysage format francais
© The Artist.
Here’s another painting of the same scene a few weeks earlier, just before the leaves opened, dating from 2007:
‘Berges du Dropt’
Oil on MDF Panel
30 x 40cm (approx 12 x 16 inches).
© The Artist.
“The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.” – Matisse
Recent paintings 2010 webpage
Posted on April 4, 2011
Webpage update … always a good exercise to chose a dozen images. ” If the studio was on fire, which 12 paintings would you save?” (actually some of them are sold).
Thank you for all your feedback & comments.
La Dordogne à Lalinde 2 – L’Eau et les Rêves, Gaston Bachelard.
Posted on March 30, 2011
Medium Size Oil on canvas
x 40cm (approx 30 x 14 inches).
© The Artist
I was born in a country of brooks and rivers, in a corner of Champagne, called le Vallage for the great number of its valleys. The most beautiful of its places for me was the hollow of a valley by the side of fresh water, in the shade of willows…
My pleasure still is to follow the stream, to walk along its banks in the right direction, in the direction of the flowing water, the water that leads life towards the next village…
But our native country is less an expanse of territory than a substance; it’s a rock or a soil or an aridity or a water or a light. It’s the place where our dreams materialize; it’s through that place that our dreams take on their proper form….Dreaming beside the river, I gave my imagination to the water, the green, clear water, the water that makes the meadows green. I can’t sit beside a brook without falling into a deep reverie, without seeing once again my happiness….The stream doesn’t have to be ours; the water doesn’t have to be ours. The anonymous water knows all my secrets. And the same memory issues from every spring.
– L’Eau et les Rêves. Essai sur l’imagination de la matière. Gaston Bachelard.
Poplar Grove, Dusk
Posted on March 24, 2011
Oil on MDF panel
These groves of trees are planted not far from the river Dropt. All straight & square, they are grown for cardboard boxes. I like openness & airiness of the groves. Not quiet field, not quiet wood. An ‘in-between space’. BTW, they have a bright orange fungus on their trunks , just like walnut trees in winter.
WIP: Lay-in, Large Oil, Plein Air
Posted on March 22, 2011
This large work in progress from last year… again now is the time the poplars are in bloom… ‘bronzage’, with their bronze crimson yellow catkins on white-grey-violet trunks with yellow fungus…
Why so big? Why o why why? Humanly impossible to do it one plein-air session! Left it to stew under a building site when the roof came off the house last year. Have some doubts about it…
post script – large plein-airs are… difficult.
