Running up that Hill!

What a surprise to find Kate Bush, who always hangs around my studio, has made it to the top of the charts at the age of 63! Are we best mates? Nope but Kate and her album the Hounds of Love is the music I paint to since my art school days. Nobody, absolutely nobody can get me into the zone like Kate. The first time I saw her through the mist of her Wuthering Heights video, I knew that she and I had a ''thing'', my dad used to call her that wingeing woman, but even that couldn’t put me off. No Christmas Season can kick off without ‘’December Will be Magic Again'', but what’s that got to do with this post …. well, it’s a hill (in my painting) and although I have only walked up it, Running up that Hill is a metaphor for how challenged I feel by my new surroundings, those vineyards on the hills! Don’t worry, I know this isn’t a masterpiece but that wasn’t the intention. Hills are not going to become my new thing but they obviously will appear in the paintings that I do here, so this is about getting a handle on them. Done plein air in my garden, a 20 minute study ….. Kerry couldn’t go to the mountain (too much gardening and washing) so the hill came to Kerry! 

You always hear about artists ''set up'', here mine is a very convenient drying rack (complete with bedding) and a light portable easel, and immediately you can see one of the major problems of painting plein air (in situ), the light. 

I started painting in sunlight and ended in dappled light; light is definitely a problem when painting outdoors. You can choose to work in the shade looking out into the sun or stand in the sun painting but either way it will play havoc with your values. You tend to lose the extreme lights and darks and end up pretty muddy in mid values, (in my case this was also made more difficult by the fact that I need to order some new dark greens), so squint and go for putting down the large dark/light shapes. 

Equipment is important too, not here obviously because although I started out with the intention of only using my little shards of pastel, I did pop inside and get pastel pencils and sticks. If you head off to paint outside you really need to consider where you are painting, can you transport a wooden French easel, a heavy wooden pastel box complete with two million sticks, a chair and a sun umbrella? I can’t as my motifs are often to be found only on foot (I find the broken little pieces of pastel and shards much better and of course you have less weight and more variety but obviously not as impressive as a full set of whatever). 

And here is the hill in the background…..! After completing this wee study, I felt like I'd run up it, do I feel better about painting hills, naaaa, not really I think it’s going to take a bit longer till I say, oh look at those lovely hills, I must paint those, maybe my friend Kate can get me in the zone!