paintings

Sketchbook ~ Orkney

| kirsti

Orkney, in one word, fabulous.

Rounding the corner during the first 10 minutes on the island to see in the distance my cousin (once or twice removed – I can never get that straight)’s house in the distance topped with a Canadian flag that was barely hanging on in the typical Orkney wind was also fabulous.

Over the course of the next week we visited neolithic ruins (both above and below ground), dropped in on Stromness shopping week, explored the now decrepit but hopefully soon to be refurbished ruins of John Rae’s boyhood house, survived a gull-lead hedgehog carrion bombing and spent many a wonderful evening in the company of relatives I barely knew I had.

Orkney repaid my gushing admiration with a day of little wind but still pounding seas and I was able to do a little bit of painting of the cliffs at Yesnaby.

Yesnaby, Orkney Island, Scotland 1 | watercolour on arches cold press | 7″x10″



Yesnaby, Orkney Island, Scotland 2 | watercolour on arches cold press | 7″x10″

Alas, we never did see the Primula scotica but we did see a whole lot of other things.

Orkney, I miss you already.

painting at Yesnaby | photo by Darren

Sketchbook ~ Scotland (1)

| kirsti

North Esk Road

North Esk Road, Montrose, Scotland | pen

Things have been very quiet on this blog for the past month as I’ve been away. I just got back today from a month in Scotland, Wales and Paris – and although the trip was fantastic, it is fabulous to be home. I did a few paintings/drawings on location while I was away. Here are a couple of them from the beginning of the trip. I’ve been up for almost 24 hours at this point so the rest of them will have to wait until another time.

Old and St Andrew's Church, Montrose

Old and St Andrew’s Church, Montrose, Scotland | watercolour on arches hot press, 7″x10″

A Different Kind of Painting

| kirsti

…
I’ve been on a bit of a break from my home studio, having relocated for one week to my grandmother’s island studio where I have a corner of my own to work on larger paintings. I’ve been recharging my creative batteries by chipping away at a sizable oil painting that I’m hoping will be the beginning of a series. It’s nice to just paint and let the painting be what it wants to be rather than beating it into submission to fit the parameters of a project.

At the beginning of the week, a friend came over and we took advantage of the sizable studio space to do some light painting photography one evening. However, the long exposures didn’t play nice with my camera (or card?), prompting a repeated error 99 so everything was shot on her Canon Digital Rebel XT. After a bit of fussy experimentation with too many lights, we figured out that less is definitely more. My photos lean a little heavy on the ‘spitting’ side as I kept getting the trajectory of the light spit wrong and had to keep redoing them (it’s hard to see your target in the dark). As it is, the spit still seems to be emanating from the chin area.

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