Another commissioned painting, this time as a gift from the parents to a young couple to be married. This spot on the Blackwood River just by the Road bridge was where they got engaged. A lovely gesture and a fantastic subject but oh what a challenge!

I visited the site to scout it out and took about a million photos trying to find a suitable viewpoint for the composition. Many were in panoramic series using a DSLR. I just couldn’t fit in the amount of information I wanted to with single photos. Back in the studio after compiling the panoramas and trolling though all the photos many times I decided the best composition would be as can be seen in the finished painting. I put my ideas to the client and they gave me the go ahead.

Lovely as the composition was, the lighting pattern in my reference photos was unsuitable. The sun was lighting up the far bank and reflecting across the river beautifully, but the wooden platform and seat were in dull shadow and all the foreground trees were in dark silhouette. I couldn’t make the painting work like that so I had to go back to the river a few times until I got the perfect light fall that I needed on the foreground bank.

The original composition was based on a panorama of six portrait photos panned from right to left across the subject and the new photos I had to take had to match that exactly. I had to take them from the same spot so I went looking for that and lining up the various elements in the original photos to work out where to stand. I couldn’t do it! I walked up and down the bank in frustration trying vainly to position myself at the correct intersect between the wooden structures and the large tree on the left. Nothing looked right. Eventually I discovered the large tree no longer existed! It had fallen into the river and left only a bit of jagged stump. I new where everything was now so I positioned the camera and got the new series of photos I needed to capture the better light conditions although sans tree.

Back in the studio I processed the panorama for my new reference and compared to the original I found that now all the beautiful light I had captured on the far bank and water was dark shadow in the new photos. I had two completely different times of day with different light falls on one side of the composition to the other and a missing tree. However I could see the composite of these two images would make the painting I wanted although I really wasn’t sure how I’d bring the two different light patterns together.  I had the tree in one reference image which I had to keep, along with beautiful light across the water and far bank. However all the foreground foliage and trees on the close bank were in dark silhouette as opposed to the later reference with the good foreground lighting where they were all glowing bright greens and yellows with sun shining through them.

I have a selection of subjects from around Bridgetown and surrounds that I searched out last year. They are specifically interesting landmarks – well to me at least – and feature old structures.

I used to paint a lot of buildings and vehicles in various stages of decay but I tired of it and wanted to widen my visual vocabulary. That’s fancy artist talk for learn to paint something different! So I’ve painted pretty much nothing but trees and bush for the last decade whilst venturing way outside my comfort zone with style.

Having settled down in my new home and studio I began to feel the itch to tackle some old themes and re-explore my old painting methods and that’s what I’m doing with these current paintings. The first one re-employing my old working methods was The Piggery on Winnejup Road.

This particular subject is only a few minutes drive from where I live and I often go trundling by it in my travels. It was a no-brainer for a painting.

This painting was commissioned as a gift for the property owner by his wife. I was fortunate to be given free reign on what the actual subject was so I was able to create a composition that I hoped would really hit the mark and one that I was excited about painting.

In researching I found out the recipient loves his trees and animals so I aimed to feature those elements strongly.

After exploring the whole property I settled on a view looking up a slope to a magnificent stand of trees. The rough vehicle track was a bonus, adding an entry way into the painting. What It didn’t have was any animals.

People always ask me about photography with regard to paintings – “Do you use photographs or go to the spot and paint?”. Well, the answer is both, depending on a lot of circumstances. Small simple works can be done on site in one sitting. Sometimes I will start on site, work frantically while the conditions and light are suitable and then complete the painting in the studio at my leisure. Larger paintings or formal compositions are created entirely as studio projects.

In this case it was all studio so I had to collect as much reference material from the site as I could. The most efficient way to do this is by taking photographs, lots of them. Not just one for the subject, but details of all the little interesting bits within and close-ups of what’s in shadows. It’s almost impossible to get all the visual info I want from one front-on photo. The compression in space of elements being reduced to two dimensions makes it really hard to distinguish the placement order of some things, such as branches. Side on reference photos give a different perspective that enables me to solve those compositional puzzles.

Added to that I’ll take notes on anything I can observe at the time such as position of the sun, colour impressions, compass direction of subject view, time and anything else I think may be useful when I’m at the easel.

I was heading inland from Perth in Western Australia on a late winter’s day with threatening rain and heavy cloud build-up.  From York I headed inland towards the small farming town of Quairading, deep in the Wheat Belt. Canola crops were everywhere, mature, strong and in full flower.

Above, the moody clouds spat rain at the ground in passing showers. When I went off the bitumen and started exploring through the minor gravel back-roads that wended their way around the fields and undulating terrain, the gullys were awash. The small creeks and waterways were running or had recently been.

As Gertie the Jeep hit the bottom of each culvert with enough impetus to keep going through and up out the other side, explosive sheets of cold muddy water shot straight out, up and over everything. Thankfully, the rains later that day washed most of the dirt off, although as usual in such conditions, great clumps of mud were built up under the wheel arches and in other hard to get to places!

However, it was still a beautiful day and when the sun broke through the clouds, blooming heads on countless rows of Canola lit up in acres of rich yellows and gold.

Driving through Stirling Range National Park, the scenery is amazing.

Winding gravel roads reveal changing forms as you crest rises and suddenly there are new cloud patterns and shapes as the mountains shift their contours from different angles and distances.

On this day, my wife and I stopped and trekked up one of the many vantage points to take in the view. From a distance we watched a sheet of rain come racing across the landscape and suddenly we realised that Gertie the Jeep was being pelted down in the carpark and there was no way for us to avoid it either. A rather rapid and undignified descent down a gravelly, rock and bush strewn path ensued. Needless to say, we got soaked.

This rather moody scene was one I encountered travelling east along the Salt River Road on the edge of the Stirling Range National Park in Western Australia.

The Stirling Range, not far from Albany on the southern coast, is about the only place in the state that occasionally gets a bit of snow on its highest bits during very cold periods. Enough to throw a snowball or make a snowman – that’s about it. The only way to get up is by foot so you have to be keen to see some snow, seeing as it’s usually accompanied by cold, wet, windy and miserable conditions.

A view looking south along Walter Willis Road beside the Blackwood River near Bridgetown, Western Australia. This is on a circular route just near my home. I travel along the road quite regularly just to look at the scenery and get ideas for new paintings.

Once near this spot I parked beside the river only a few hundred metres up the road and headed towards the banks, Rupert right behind me.

Cresting the bank off the grassy flat plain, a large snake reared up about two metres in front of me. It was well over a metre long and fat as my wrist! Well I backed up rapidly and yelled at Rupert to stop before quickly deciding to go and paint somewhere else, nowhere near the river. Off we went, heart thumping!

It’s been fifteen months since we started building and after a lot of exhaustive work I am thrilled to announce that 1RiverView, my new studio, is ready for use.

1RiverView includes my luxurious (by all previous standards) custom built studio which opens on to a purpose built display space for my work. The studio has paintings hanging as well and the public are welcome to look around at my work area.

If you are visiting Bridgetown in the beautiful Blackwood River Valley which the studio overlooks, please stop by. I will be having an “Open Studio” every weekend so people can call in, have a look around, view my latest paintings and have a chat. Viewings can be made at any time by appointment.

Otago Harbour from the Otago Peninsula. Eighth in my New Zealand series. This view meets you when travelling back from the tip of the Otago Peninsula towards Dunedin. The road winds around the inland side of the peninsula just above the water.

This ramshackle arrangement is viewed across the bay which is in the foreground, then the road curves around with the bay to the right and brushes by the buildings which are on a point of land before sharply veering left again.

The water behind is the large sheltered inlet between the peninsula and the mainland called Otago Harbour. In the background on the land is Mount Cargill which overlooks Dunedin.

I was instantly struck by the charming rundown, rusty, salty appeal of this subject. The fishing boats are working but the jetty and buildings look like they are just waiting for one good wave to topple the lot.

As appears to be the usual for Dunedin, there was not a lot of sun about at the time so as my Grandmother used to say, here is “another lovely grey day”.

I was camping by a river bed in the Leichardt Range not far from Ravenswood, a decaying old gold mining town in northern Queensland, Australia. I’d been there for a few days, completely out of phone or internet contact, isolated with just Rupert and a few passing cattle for company.

This was a beautiful evening with stunning vistas everywhere. I’d taken Gertie the Jeep up the rather ambitious rocky climb out of the valley I was in, high up the side of the hill amongst some old mine diggings. The view was unbeatable and the light was perfect. I set up for plein air painting and got to work. A photo of the site with the painting under way can be seen on my Instagram feed here.

I’d left my phone in the Jeep as I could only use it for GPS and map navigating the last few days when suddenly I hear it start chirping. Apparently, the universe had shifted slightly and at my increased altitude I started to get some signal – good old Telstra! – It was the first time my wife had been able to contact me for days and she wanted to talk. I spent the next half hour climbing further up the hill to improve reception, abandoning my easel, wet palette and half constructed painting.

The light faded away as I watched the Sun disappear over the hills towards the west and evening moved in, the stars coming to life. When I finally hung up, it was dark. I cleaned up and packed away my painting gear by the aid of torchlight. Needless to say, no more work got done on the painting. I mooched back down the hill to camp and stashed the wet canvas away to dry.

Back in Western Australia in my studio, I got to work on the canvas and finished it with the aid of a bunch of reference photos I’d had the good sense to take at the time before I started painting.

A stunning hot afternoon on the remote Darling River out of Menindee in New South Wales. The painting captured a period where the sun back lit all the foliage on the trees and everything glowed.

This is the culmination of a series of works from the location. In preparation for the painting I did a set of four 9 x 5 Tree Studies and a plein air oil study of the composition. This studio painting has been created over the last several months from the plein air oil studies and some reference photos I took at the time.

The stretch of river is on Viewmont Station near the ruins of old Tintinallogy.

East of Townsville across Cleveland Bay lies the majestic sprawling Cape Cleveland jutting out into the Pacific Ocean. I went out there a couple of times, negotiating the muddy 4WD tracks through the thick semi-tropical Savannah along the base of the rugged hills.

On a few occasions I worked my way out along a labyrinth of dubious tracks across the tidal mud flats to line up with the keen locals to try my luck fishing. Standing warily high on the banks of the deep green tidal waterways, hemmed in on both sides by bug infested mangroves and facing an unknown number of crocodiles lurking in the swirling waters below, I cast my lines. Despite being part of a National Park, everybody had their dogs with them, me included. I couldn’t go adventuring without Rupert. Pleased to say I did catch a feed.

On another day, in a clearing surrounded by boulders and dense bush beneath the hills, I shot a lot of the footage for one of my videos, “Oil Painting Brushes for Landscape Painting”. It was hot and humid, but the scenery was fantastic.

So one day I want to do some plein air painting. I drive down the Bruce Highway out of Townsville, past Nome and Alligator Creek to a point where the magnificent Mount Elliot sits inland to the right within Bowling Green Bay National Park and the Cape Cleveland Road turns off to the left across the railway line. This is the only road access that heads out around Crocodile Creek to the aforementioned fishing flats of Cape Cleveland.

There is a muddy track and tidal waterways that run beside the Bruce Highway from The Cape Cleveland Road intersection and it is down this bumpy track I go. I find a spot where I can set up with a view of the Cape in the distance across the shallow waters. The water birds come and go and make all sorts of noises. Some wade around on spindly legs, picking morsels out of the mud with long beaks whilst smaller birds erupt in flocks, fly spiritedly around a bit with a lot of sqarking before settling down again at another spot not far from the first. I wonder what animals made the heavy footprints in the mud that seem to meander out into nowhere. I’m not going to investigate – there my be saltwater crocodiles out there and I don’t want to meet one on foot, far from solid ground.

So I stay on dry soil safely beside my 4WD, with Rupert unhappily hot and bored and occasionally pestering me to do something more interesting. I set up my easel and get on with the business of plein air painting. Most of the visual information I want, I get down on the canvas before deciding I’d rather be back in the shade beside my caravan enjoying a cold beer!

To finish the story, I pulled the unfinished little painting out of my folio a week or so ago, and applied the final studio touches that I like to do.

A Wooly Visitor on Saddle Hill. Sixth in my New Zealand series. I was painting on Saddle Hill, just south of Dunedin when I encountered this curious onlooker. I don’t know what she thought of me parked in the grass of her domain with easel and paints scattered across the bonnet of my son Clinton’s car but I don’t think she was too impressed.

She stayed only long enough for me to grab a reference shot with my camera before turning and racing off back down the hill. Later in the studio, I worked her into this little landscape. Somehow on this outing I managed to flick sprays of ultramarine blue paint across the windscreen when I was laying in the edges of the sky. I didn’t dob myself in and Clint didn’t say anything about it so my efforts to clean the oil spatters off his car must have been successful. Lucky that the sheep didn’t get too close or it could have been sporting some wool with tiny blue polka dots.

I’ve received feedback on my YouTube video French Box Easel – Full Guided Tour with people asking for more information about my personal customisations.  In response I have made another video about the French Box focusing on the extra attachable cross member I showed which allows small boards and canvasses to be held at the very top of the easel.

The gallery below has all the still photos from the video plus measurements in imperial and metric so that anyone interested in building their own can use my example as a guide.

The dimensions are mostly arbitrary as I used scrap wood I had available and made it up as I went along. However the overall size of this one is small enough to store inside the box itself and large enough to securely hold any small painting support. One improvement I would suggest is to glue the first pair of spacer washers in place which I haven’t done yet – saves fiddling about with them.

A moody grey day south of Dunedin. Fifth in my New Zealand series. One evening about 6 o’clock, when the wild weather seemed to be abating for a while, I drove down the coast from Dunedin in search of some subjects to paint. A few kilometres from Dunedin is a small settlement called Brighton.

There is a bridge that crosses this waterway and around are clusters of buildings. From the bridge I could just see the surf of the Pacific Ocean breaking across the sandbar. Out there it was so windy, cold and wild but here this little stretch of sheltered water was relatively calm and inviting in comparison. In the distance the beach glowed and the white surf pounded as the ominous grey sky bore relentlessly north.

More Gouache collectables from 2005 that have been archived until now. This is all there is of the second series I painted then.

The concept behind these little paintings, same as the “Desolation” theme, was for me to have fun working with several familiar themes and in a medium different to oils in order to create several series of inexpensive original paintings for collectors.

For more information see the post on the “Desolation” theme.

This “Moonlight Mulga” Theme has four works on Bockingford and one ACEO art card on mat board, all matted and ready to frame.

The continuing adventures of Michael in New Zealand. . . and introducing some obligatory sheep. The fourth landscape in this series from the Otago region around Dunedin on new Zealand’s South Island. The same place as the last painting listed but looking in a different direction.

This was how I saw the day fade away on Xmas Eve 2004, battered by the cold winds beating across the Otago Peninsula. The sheep seemed warm and happy, but I was freezing!

Behind me were long sloping fields leading down to cliffs that dropped into the Cold grey Pacific Ocean. Occasionally a shaft of sun would break through, sweep quickly across the hills and light up the sheep as if they were in a spotlight on a darkened stage.

A quiet pool on the Helena River, in the hills out of Perth in Western Australia. Cool, clear running water that I couldn’t keep the dogs out of. You used to be able to get here by driving to the very “bush tracky” end of Helena Valley Road but now it’s been cut off to vehicles so walking or biking is the only way in.

Luckily, a popular walking path runs right by this spot and meanders up along the valley hillsides where you pass above the Lower Helena Diversion Dam. This is mostly mud unfortunately in this new era of dried up water catchments. Of course the dogs love romping in the mud and you can guess the result of that! Further up, the river is interrupted by Mundaring Weir which supplies drinking water to Perth.

I’d been camping along the Running River, a tributary of the Burdekin River in Northern Queensland, sketching and taking photos – although Rupert and I seemed to spend more time swimming and kayaking in the beautiful clear warm running shallow water pools of the river than actually doing any work. Even tried fishing but the only thing I found was a curious little turtle that came paddling by and as they do, hung around like a begging puppy hoping I’d throw him a snack.

We trekked up into the surrounding hills a bit, hoping to find some suitable painting subjects, which as it happened, were everywhere – but it was just too hot on top of all that baking stone so we retreated back to the shade and coolness of the river banks.

We’d made our way to the Running River through the thick mountainous rainforests of  Paluma, north of Townsville, but after a week I headed back to base in Townsville via a more direct route as I was under threat from my wife to be in phone contact by a certain day or she was calling out the cavalry to find me!

The Herveys Range Road heads inland from Townsville. The road up the mountains affords some magnificent views of the coastal plains before rapidly crossing into hot dry Outback cattle country. So it was along this road that Rupert and I were trundling along when I went by this stand of great big boulders (among many such groups) sitting squatly in the dry grass amongst the scraggly trees. I took some photos and notes before carrying on and recreated the scene later in my studio when I was back in Western Australia.