I’m really into the colours of the sky and amping things up to the max in this one.

On June 20th 2023 I had one of the best experiences of my life at Hever Castl, Kent.

I was a contestant (a Wildcard) Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year – my favourite TV show!

I arrived early in the day (we had to be there for 7am) and there was a very black cloud on the horizon… a very black cloud. We’d had wall-to-wall sunshine for over a month, so I really should have expected it!

We queued together, fifty Wildcard artists, huddled together under our brollies sheltering from the incessant downpour.

I’d heard that your canvases/panels/or whatever medium you brought would be checked and stamped. Whether it was the conditions or otherwise, I was slightly disappointed to only get a dab from a permanent marker on the back of my two canvases – I wanted that Landscape Artist stamp… I can add it to the TV icons I always wanted but never received, a Blue Peter badge, and at the time – a Jim’ll Fix It medallion.

It was a little chaotic and I will admit now that I kinda gatecrashed the pod artists area early. It’s a long story, but I got chatting to a photographer who was part of the show and asked him if he knew where to go. He kindly took me in the right direction and I followed.

This gave me a view of the area before any of my fellow Wildcards and I figured out where I wanted to paint from before the others arrived. It wasn’t deliberate, but sometimes you’ve got to go with the flow.

I’d practised a 4 hour effort of Hever Castle at the weekend ahead of the main event, and my heart sank a little when I realised that we were not going to paint the Castle. Funnily enough, the following day’s episode was located exactly where my practise painting was located!

After a while I was joined by my fellow Wildcards and we shot the famous “here come the Wildcards” shot for the episode.

I’d already figured where I wanted to paint from so I’d asked my wife to try and get that spot, which she duly did – advice no.1 bring a painting partner to help you on the day!

We quickly got down to business. The Wildcards start ahead of the pod artists, which means that you get to see the end of the main competition and the judges discussions and announcements of the winners.

I’m sworn to secrecy on that point obviously, and I can’t share my painting until the program airs in 2024, but I loved seeing the behind the scenes of the programme and talking a little with the judges.

I took on the main architectural element in the view, which was possibly a mistake as it was a challenge that I could have avoided if I’d concentrated on the landscape of the lake and parkland. That said, on the day you feel like you have no time and I’m not a seasoned plein air artist, so I probably rushed to judgement a little bit.

I didn’t ask Tai to move out of my view when he was composing himself ahead of his first bit to camera. It’s kinda weird seeing your painting heroes in the flesh, a mix of awe and inspiration. I didn’t want to let Tai down, so I got my head down and painted.

I wasn’t interviewed by a presenter or judge (I was by a producer on the show), but to my left my painting buddy was interviewed by Stephen Mangan (who seemed like the nicest bloke you’ll meet).

An artist directly behind me was interviewed by Tai. I was worried about builder’s bum every time I bent over to get some paint!

One thing that you don’t realise is that you are open to the public, so visitors to Hever Castle could wander through and talk to us. If I’m honest I had a crisis of confidence a little as both the artists next to me were really strong and kept eliciting praise from passers by, whereas I didn’t get a squeak.

*If you go along to an event give the competitors some positive encouragement as I guarantee you they’ll appreciate that energy, and maybe even need it!

I loved seeing the filming of the show. This was when Stephen and Tai went on a boat on the lake – who doesn’t love their little skits on the show? No spoilers, but they didn’t fall in the lake.

Seeing the judges interact and appraise things is really interesting and makes you remember it’s a TV program first and an art competition second.

Once we’d run out of time, Tai was sent around us to pick his winner. As he started by me I knew I’d not won as he always goes on a little meander, I won’t say who won, but they were worthy winners.

I was hugely impressed with the quality of art that was produced in challenging conditions.

As I said before, the pod artists started after us Wildcards and we were free to go watch them in their nervous final moments.

I loved every moment of the experience. I have to say I think the level of stress for the pod artists is somewhat higher than for the Wildcards. Every thing you do is on camera – there is no place to hide at all.

We watched the completion of the art and then the selection of their top-three artists and eventual winner. By this point the weather had turned and the horrible weather at the start of the day was replaced by burning sunshine.

I’m glad I chose oils as a medium as it really stood up to the conditions.

I loved the experience. There is such a positive vibe about the day and everyone is rooting for one another. Will I do it again? I really, really hope so.

I think this will be episode one of the new series in January/Feb 2024 – I can’t promise you’ll see me on the show, but I do promise you’ll see some great art!

Back to a longer-form painting following a few weeks of plein air painting and I’m going to the seaside!

Clevedon is a “classy” Victorian seaside resort in North Somerset. The “beach” is a rocky bank on the Severn Estuary. That said, it has a beautiful Victorian pier – no arcades, or Punch and Judy!

The architecture is pure Victorian and there is a large main promenade that is biased towards cars – a point of local contention!

I love a walk along here though, with little to obscure the light and the horizon, there is always something to look at…

Let’s get painting!

I always start in the distance. The sky sets the scene here – it leads the eye and generates depth in the image.

I actually love painting sky – it’s free and easy, and you can manipulate it to fit your needs far easier than pretty-much anything else.

I like the forced perspective here and the new cycle path rally does create strong lines to follow.

Some people hate the path – but as an artist, it adds something to an otherwise grey area.

Speaking of grey…

I’m going for a reasonably muted palette that will allow me to bring focus to people and objects using colour. I’m not trying for photo-realism here – but maybe a little Wes Anderson does Clevedon?

I could keep going for a long time on this painting. I could straighten up wonky lines and add details, but I think I’m almost done.

I will finish the pedestrians and add a few elements. The point you’re done with a painting is when it tells you I guess.

I am tempted to go acrylics and go for more photo realism for the next painting, but I’ll see what the paint tells me.

Think I’m done!

I attempted to paint with acrylics on an extremely hot and humid day.

The result? The paints were drying within seconds and it really hampered my efforts, however… necessity is the mother of invention and it forced me to be really quick and adopt a new style.

The painting ended up quite illustrative – not my plan – but not a complete disaster in the end.

Just shows that new experiences deliver new learnings!

A quick look at my “Stinkfish – Stokes Croft” painting.

I bought a mobile (ish) easel and had my first stab at plein air painting and what a lesson it was!

I picked a spot with a lot of interest (too much!) and got set-up… it was quite grey and I hoped it would be a quiet spot… how wrong I was!

I bought myself an amazing steak pasty from just around the corner, steadied my nerves and got down to business.

I had put a bright orange wash on the panel to match my jumper!

I think at this stage the water was done… I should have left it. Also never start at the bottom… but the tight Scot in me couldn’t stand wasting paint so used up what I had.

The no.1 lesson in plein air painting is that conditions will change… and they defintely did.
The sun came out and everything got harder to be honest – especially the sun on the back of my neck!

With the sun came the people! It was nice and daunting at the same time – people take interest and ask questions, usually just as you smudge something and make your painting worse it turns out!

I’d given myself a four hour limit due to practical issues of not abandoning the family on holiday! And it turns out that four hours is not a long time!

I was out of time, and stopped.

I am not “happy” with the painting, but I learned a lot. I am going to try again this weekend at a similar location nearby and try acrylic as I struggled with drying / smudging and muddying up my painting.

I think I could work up the panel into a nice little painting, but at the same time I think it should stand as it is as that was the day and the time.

This is StinkFish‘s iconic piece at Stokes Croft. I worked on this street for about half a year, just behind the traffic light actually…

I’m going to paint this on a different format than the recent paintings, the interest here is the colour and shape.

First things first – get things layed out! This is where I put a grid on the reference image (I had to add a bit of sky here to frame things better) and then I scale it to my canvas.

This is definitely the easiest way to lay things out for me… if anyone has good ideas about how to not smudge pencil then let me know!

I don’t enjoy this part, but it is essential for me… I just want to get painting!

I always start with the sky – two reasons… it’s the furthest thing away an everything sits on top of it and also, I can paint below it on the canvas without fear of smudging.

I’m blocking in colours here and will finesse as I build the painting up. There is a lot of pavement and road to paint, and for that I have one person to learn from – a realtively local artist Pete Brown – he is the master of street scenes and can make any surface sing. Just look at this pavement!

I may have fixated a little too much on the amazing skills of this artist and it let me to over-work and over-think the pavement in my painting.

The good news is I can resolve things with more paint and more time!

A complete disaster!

I have to remind myself that I am painting in tough blocks and I will finesse things as I go. Always remember never to judge an unfinished piece. Mind you, stepping back and taking a look does give you time to think and change direction.

Still blocking in, but using the turquoise wash gave me a thought about using it across the finished painting to tie things together and almost create a graffiti esque style to the finished painting, so I think I will pursue that.

The star of the painting is the girl and, importantly, I am happy with how that part is going, everything can come alive around her.

It’s amazing how paintings guide you as much as you them! Sometimes you don’t see what you’ve got until you see the whole. With more work the pavement is beginning to fit the whole.

So, I’m getting close to the finish line here…

The question is always how far do you go – when is it done, done?

I obviously couldn’t leave the woman’s legs blue! That was a must-do job – as is the tree on the left.

Very-nearly, almost, done. Couple of bits to go and then it’s ready for it’s new home at my first customer’s house.

…and the finished painting is here!

I visited the harbour area in Bristol in January 2023 on my bike and I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of the graffiti and the classical view of the bridge.

I’m hoping to create a muted background and a clourful forground to help the graffiti pop!

I painted a pink wash over a 100cm x 50 cm canvas and drew out the scene.

I reaslised I’d not quite gotten the proportions of the graffiti right, so rather than try to fix it I also realised that the graffiti has already changed in the weeks since the photo. The whole point is that new artists come along and add to it and change it… so why not me?

Not sure where the green worm emerged from *excess of paint from doing grass probably*… but they can stay.

I decided to paint in my lunch hour…
Seemed like a good idea, until I rushed things. I mixed some deep blue and it’s a brute and way too much. So what I added at lunch looks like a sticker on top of the painting.

I will be knocking it back somehow when it dries. Every day is a learning day!

That’s going to take some serious knocking back with some zinc white and moving the colours away from pure colours more towards grey to get it to sit in the painting.

Mixed in some zinc white to my blues and knocked back the red outlines. Warmed up the next set of graffiti and I think it’s working a lot better now.

I took a trip back to the scene of the crime this morning. All that remains from those few weeks ago is “WONK”.

I’m not sure if that liberates me to do what I want, or commits me to record the time of the photo faithfully?

I’m contemplating entering Landscape Artist of the Year… ehy not? If so, I need a submission photo of me, the artist. I think I need to do better than the one below!

I spent a bit of time on the foreground grass. Turns out grass is really hard! Think I’m getting the feel of long/short grass, and also the trodden grass on the right, where graffiti artists have obviously been.

A bit of post-breakfast / pre-work on the river and southwest bank. I don’t want to over-work things – I’m not trying for photo realism here, so I think I’m going to leave that alone.
I also knocked back the left tower of the bridge a bit. I still want it more in light than the Clifton side, but I needed to push it back a bit.

Getting closer!

Quick lunchtime 30 minutes paint… the tree at the end of the path went in and some bull rush seed heads. The tree had been scaring me to be honest as I have the least-steady hands (resulting in many a tantrum when playing Operation as a child), but I’m relatively happy with it.

Final touches…
I finished the graffiti on the wall. Not that it can ever be finished!
I adding some shadow to the monolithic “Ask” block and I painted the toadstool.
A final addition was the specks to indicate the birds floating in the river by the bank.

I think that’s finished. I could go on paitning it and fixing things, but I think I’m happy with it. Onto the next one.

If you’re interested in the Bristol street art scene then go take a look at https://scooj.org/ a website that documents what’s going on and changing in and around Bristol’s walls.

I took a photo of the Marina back in January 2022. It was a cold and crisp day, but it was still and the light was amazing… I obviously had to paint it.

Everything started out with getting the layout sorted – a job requiring wine!

I got the palette knife out for the first time and played a bit!