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| sketching the cherry tree pencil & watercolour 14x19cm |
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You could do a sketch, a quick watercolour, a detailed acrylic, a lovely rich smelling oil (open that window), a collage, a mosaic, a cross stitch, a photo, a poem, a sculpture... What else?
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You could make one artwork a day, chart the progressing season, or one quick one every hour from waking up until going to bed.
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You could make a mini sketchbook or folder containing an artwork each for every window in your house, including the one in the toilet and that little one above the door that you really can't see anything but sky out of.
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You could draw all the birds you can spot from a window (and please share the results with me!), or every tree, or every person that walks past.
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You could get a large sheet of paper or the inside of a cereal box and paint onto it every red thing that you see from the window in the space of a morning. Or blue. Or a #KeyWorker rainbow of drawn 'things from the window', one thing of each colour - ROYGBIV.
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You could draw the clouds as they pass your window, then try the same using paint - which do you find easier? Which do you enjoy more? They may not be the same
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You could draw the clouds again - turning them into creatures and faces, or castles in the sky (brilliant film from Studio Ghibli).
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Paint the things on your windowsill, not just the view beyond it. (See the paintings of Winifred Nicholson and Sylvia Wishart further down this blog post.)
So many artists have made great use of the views from their windows. Have a look at some of my favourites below. As well as the ideas above you could also:
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Recreate one of your window views in the style of one of the artists below.
Searching for "window" in the Art in Healthcare Collection brings up these six and more:
Bold, bright, patterns and textures:
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| At A Window David Michie Oil Painting 115.5 x 115.5 cm https://www.artinhealthcare.org.uk/work.php?code=L110 |
Lovely thick thick paint, thickly spread. This would work with oil and with acrylic. Try using a palette knife:
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The Other Side
Mardi Barrie
Oil Painting 47 x 63 cm |
Super-detailed. This might take you until the end of lockdown!:
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April 1997
Barbara Balmer
Acrylic and Gouache
https://www.artinhealthcare.org.uk/work.php?code=P851 115 x 124.5 cm |
Photos are allowed too of course:
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Looking Through the Venus/Jupiter Conjuction Window
Patricia McCormack
Photography 73 x 53 cm |
Lovely lively fresh sketchy piece, no concerns about making it perfect:
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Blairlogie Chapel, Window and Leaves
Marjorie I Campbell
Drawing & Watercolour 59 x 46 cm |
Look at this great collage, including marbled mountain views, marbled vase, marbled bowl:
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Green Tea and Fuji-San
Elspeth Lamb
Mixed Media and Collage 64 x 80 cm |
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Winifred Nicholson
Probably my favourite of all window painters. She painted vase after vase of picked flowers on windowsills. The paint is thick and chunky yet the paintings are delicate and so beautiful. Her colours... she uses bright bold colour but doesn't overdo it.
Look at this first one, Easter Monday, gorgeous:
and here, the brushmarks, the thick globby paint (now cracking with age up in the sky):
And this! No detail, only blues whites and grey-browns. I want to be daydreaming at that window:
Island in browns and silvery greys. Vase and plants in matching shades:
Art doesn't have to be detailed:
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| Easter Monday (c. 1950) Winifred Nicholson © The Trustees of the Estate of Winifred Nicholson https://www.apollo-magazine.com/winifred-nicholson-mima-review/ |
and here, the brushmarks, the thick globby paint (now cracking with age up in the sky):
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| Window-Sill, Lugano Winifred Nicholson 1923 Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/nicholson-window-sill-lugano-n05126 |
And this! No detail, only blues whites and grey-browns. I want to be daydreaming at that window:
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| View through a Window with Blue Curtains and a Chair Winifred Nicholson Walker Art Gallery https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/view-through-a-window-with-blue-curtains-and-a-chair-98765 |
Island in browns and silvery greys. Vase and plants in matching shades:
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| Flodigarry Island, Skye (1949) Winifred Nicholson © Trustees of Winifred Nicholson, Kettle's Yard, University of Cambridge https://www.culture24.org.uk/art/painting-and-drawing/art401866 |
Art doesn't have to be detailed:
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| Awake Winifred Nicholson https://www.lyonandturnbull.com/news/article/?i=128 |
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Kate Downie
Top contemporary artist and extremely nice generous person. Based in Scotland and exhibits often in Edinburgh. Kate isn't scared to use unconventional materials, nor to mix them all together. Inspiring.
A lot of Kate's work is based on transport and like me she is a sketcher-from-trains:
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| train window, Edinburgh to Oban Kate Downie ink, paint, http://clarehenry-artjournal.blogspot.com/2017/08/kate-downie-at-scottish-gallery-anatomy.html |
A lovely scribbly yet detailed studio view in ink. Notice the big old radiator in the foreground. The contrast of light versus dark makes black and white artworks often very impressive:
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| Three Seasons Window Kate Downie ink 79x60cm https://www.dundeeheritagetrust.co.uk/that-art-auction/kate-downie-three-seasons-window-original-ink-drawing-79-x-60cm/ |
And look at this! Approaching the Queensferry Crossing, view from car window:
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| A90 (Throat) Kate Downie oil on birch panel 84 x 92cm http://www.katedownie.com/ |
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Seascapes... landscapes... dreamscapes. Painted from the artist's windows in her cottage in Rackwick Bay on the island of Hoy, Orkney. I love all little objects from around her house (and her imagination / memory?), sitting on the windowsill or a table or reflected in the glass. I love the happenings outside the windows - animals, boats, weather. Were they there at the time she made the painting or did she add them in from past spottings, or did she conjure them from her head?
- exhibition catalogue - http://s3-eu-west-1.
I really love that ship-in-a-bottle:
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| Reflections I Sylvia Wishart © the Estate of Sylvia Wishart from the Pier Arts Centre Collection https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/reflections-i-167000/search/actor:wishart-sylvia-19362008-66333/page/2 |
As you can see, the same window view, some of the same objects. I spy a fruit bowl reflected in the window. And look at that flock gliding in on the right:
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| Hoy Sound Sylvia Wishart 1987 oil and mixed media on paper © the Estate of Sylvia Wishart from the Pier Arts Centre Collection |
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And me
I really love window views in art. Here are some of my own:
Perhaps start with quick scribbly sketches in pencil:
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| watercolour workshops on board the St. Magdelene, Union Canal, Linlithgow pencil 14.5x21cm |
Do another pencil sketch then add a bit of watercolour:
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| sketching the cherry tree pencil & watercolour 14x19cm |
Now try painting with no drawing allowed - be brave, dive straight in. Limiting the amount of time you're allowed to spend on it can really help when you're make a no-draw painting. Try 15 or 20 or 30 minutes. This one probably took me about 20 minutes:
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| tree & room acrylic c.30x25cm |
And this one probably only 10-15 minutes. You can see I wasn't allowing myself to be bothered about getting it right (after all, there's no such thing in art!), about lines being straight or being parallel, about colours overlapping in the wrong places:
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| garden acrylic c.30x25cm |
Those two were really quick acrylics. This Isle of May piece is a watercolour, still no-drawing-first but I gave myself a lot longer, probably a couple of hours (lots of that time would be spend looking, thinking, watching birds, drinking from my flask, finishing all my snacks):
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| Isle of May, April 2016 (bathhouse & foghorn) watercolour c.25x20cm |
This is my set-up as I painted it:
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| painting in the bathhouse, Isle of May |
Another Isle of May window, this time in the foghorn and using drawing pen and watercolour:
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| Isle of May South Horn, 4th June watercolour & pen c.25x20cm |
And another from the foghorn, watercolour, with its less see-through cousin gouache used for the lighter parts on the window frame and windowsill:
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| sheltering in South Horn, Isle of May watercolour c.25x20cm |
I do also love detail. Once you've done your free-er sketchier stuff as above you could go for some much longer-to-create pieces. These next two small paintings will have been made over several weeks.
When I'm working on detailed pieces like this I try to work on several different ones at the same time, and not do it every day nor for a full day because it can end up being pretty bad for the:
hands
wrists
shoulders
neck
back
eyes
(add your own)
But pretty good for getting through the audiobooks and BBC Radio on iPlayer.
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| an island interior acrylic 15.5x22cm |
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| Jura interior acrylic 25x20cm |
And of course, window views don't have to include the window. This painting was great fun to make. Painted in a couple of days from our upstairs window. Working on a larger scale and not making the details over-detailed. The whole thing was painted on top of an undercoat of golden yellow, helping to take away the coldness of all that blue:
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| Burntisland rooftops acrylic 46x63cm |
10 -
Lastly, if you have any sketches or photos from past train / bus / ferry trips:
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| on the Glasgow - Stranraer line pencil 15x21cm |
Try digging them out and painting from them:
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| near Girvan, a view to the hillsacrylic 10x14.5cm |
Here's hoping we'll all be off on exciting train journeys with sketchbooks again soon.
Best wishes,
Leo
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