I though you might like to have a bit of background on this piece. We went on holiday to Turkey when my youngest son was about eight months old at Easter 1989. I drew this crumbling doorway and took photos of it in the town near to where we were staying. I revisited the motif when I went on a printmaking course in the summer of that year at Preston Uni printmaking department. I really enjoyed drawing and painting on the metal plates prior to making the offset prints. I didn’t enjoy being hurried along by our tutor. She was Called Jane Campey and was an excellent teacher, but she knew if we spent too long on the drawing we’d never get a print, especially as the course was only for a week. The process dictates a lot of what is possible. I learnt a lot though, and was very happy with the results I got. Especially as I had tried to go on a lithography course once before when we lived down south, and quickly realised I was in the wrong place when a group of gents in suits emerged, it was a course for Industial lithography, a very different thing to the Fine Art version! Anyway, I got there in the end and would love to print again. Who knows what the future may bring. I really enjoy the half tones and textures which are just like drawing on other surfaces. Very exciting.

Now I’m laying down more colour, referring to my sketch, but also the memory, and beginning to let the marks and colours tell me how they want to be in this version.

Here’s the first stage of my new painting. Laying down some marks and gestural colour. This is in acrylic on A2 daler board.

Here’s the sketch I made for my original painting of a French garden in 1994. I’ve made a new version yesterday and today. I’ll share the stages next. I’m calling my new version ‘ Yellow Garden.’ The temperature when I made the original sketch was in the 40s. There were blue damsel flies in the dip over the first rise near the tree. It is interesting to make new versions to see how my marks and colour have changed.

Here’s a close-up of the stones that interested me on the opposite side of the river. They supported my tree and were kept dry by it and the ferns and grasses. That meant that the stones themselves kept a blue-grey tonality that really worked among the greens and orangey-browns of the grasses hanging down.

Here’s me looking across the river having finished my oil pastel and soft pencil sketch which you can also find on this blog in previous posts.

Here you can see me drawing on site from my chosen motif of the tree teetering on the edge of the supporting wall.

Now you can see the tree in close-up with the charecteristic orangy lichen on the side of the tree itself. There’s twigs growing from cut-off parts of the tree that look almost like creatures themselves!

Here’s me on our drawing day at Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. We went on  a long walk to discover motifs. You can see the pastel drawing that came out of the day on a previous blog post It was a revelation to find so much colour in what is still essetially a Winter landscape. I loved the orangy lichen on the tree behind me in this photo. You can see this on the trees in the pastel I made as well.

Here is the soft pastel drawing in stages that I made today based on a sketch of some trees by the river that I found as a motif in Hebden Bridge at the weekend. There are colours in nature that you wouldn’t believe even before spring has properly arrived. I sat on the river bank and made a study which this was taken from and I will share with you as well. My friend said there she liked the pinks in the leaves even though they weren’t really there, but they were to me!