David Bellamy – Substituting detail in a landscape painting
I’ve been cramming quite a number of adventures in lately (most of them involving a thorough wetting!), leaving me precious little time to blog, and there’s so many more lined up it’s going to be...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Sketching Alpine scenes in Watercolour
Some good folk may well manage to get out blogs while on a camel trek to Samarkand, but alas, when you are carrying all your art gear, a full china tea set and a spare rucsack full of Danish pastries …...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Capturing waves in a sketch
This is a great time for getting wet in the cause of art – taking your sketchbook and a watersoluble graphite pencil into the shallow surf on a safe beach and getting really close to those waves. You...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Injecting a sense of atmosphere into your paintings
If you really want to give your landscape paintings a boost one of the most effective methods is to inject a strong dose of atmosphere into the scene. Unfortunately most of the time when you sketch or...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Sketching and painting autumn scenes
As usual, life is so full of exciting activities that it’s hard to find time to blog, especially when I’d rather be communing with nature than with a computer. What a tremendous autumn it’s been – the...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Painting figures in a mountain landscape
Including figures in a landscape painting is one of the most basic ways of suggesting a sense of scale, but in a vast landscape where do you position them, and how large should they be? These can be...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Gearing up for winter sketching
It’s a pretty miserable, wet, misty day here in Mid-Wales, the sort that puts many people right off going out to sketch the landscape, but even in winter we can get some fine days when being out with a...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Making the most of poor weather
I hope all of you out there had a great festive season, or if Christmas isn’t your thing then you have been enjoying yourself. I seem to have been everywhere except by the laptop, hence the long...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Choose your moment
Most of you are probably aware that I rather enjoy being out in nature with my sketchbook and a Danish pastry (that’s a cake, of course, not a Scandinavian model). I always try to plan my excursions to...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Sketching with pen and watercolour
One of the most effective ways of sketching is by using pen and wash. I carry around hardback bound sketchbooks of cartridge paper amongst the many odd items in my rucsack, and these accept pen...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Nature’s Little Jokes
My recent silence is a result of being up in Snowdonia, at last finding some snow this winter to sketch and roll around in. At times ferocious winds made sketching something of a challenge, but I...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Making powerful compositions
Getting the composition right is critical whatever medium you use. In landscape painting there are many rules, or guides that will help you achieve a powerful composition, although like most ‘rules’ in...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Quick sketching in watercolour
Don’t you wish sometimes that life could be really dull, drab and boring? It can get a little too exciting for much of the time, leaving you breathless and with no time to sit back and recall all the...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Observing the Landscape
Learning to draw and observe properly are essential skills for the landscape artist in watercolour, and although most artists can see objects clearly, so many have appalling problems when trying to...
View ArticleJenny Keal – Pastel Workshop in Marlborough
Sometimes it is a good idea to take a completely different approach to a painting. I normally start by painting the sky, background hills and trees and then painting the focal point, finishing with the...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Losing mountains in clouds with your watercolours
The last six weeks have been a breathless dash and blogging I’m afraid has consequently suffered. The Patchings Art Festival in early June was marvellous as usual and it was good to see some of you...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Using tonal effects to suggest mood and space
Injecting mood into a landscape painting not only makes the overall effect much more exciting, but can create a strong sense of space and distance in the work. Although this scene of Faversham Creek in...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Hand-bagged in Dubrovnik while painting
The sun beat down as I sat in a pleasant, shady spot beside Cavtat harbour demonstrating a watercolour, when Tarzan and Jane hove into view, both bronzed as they stood before us brazenly flexing their...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Adding a sense of mystery to a waterfall painting
Waterfalls are popular subjects in a painting, and I’ve had a great many exciting moments sketching them, climbing them and abseiling down them, including ones underground where they really give you...
View ArticleDavid Bellamy – Concentrating the light in your paintings
Whatever medium you paint with, light is the all-important key. You can bathe your composition entirely in strong sunlight if you wish, but by restricting the brightest parts to one or two localised...
View Article