Scotland By Rail - Edinburgh Gateway, Edinburgh Park sculpture & nature, Union Canal to Wester Hailes & WHALE Arts Agency

goosander, Edinburgh Park, pastel, 24x30cm

Leo du Feu

Community Rail Champion

A walk from Edinburgh Gateway station, alongside the trams, past the Gyle, through Edinburgh Park business parky sculpture parky area, past Edinburgh Park station, along the Union Canal to WHALE Arts Agency in Wester Hailes.

As I've talked about before, wherever possible I try to work nature and walking into my day.

Because, well, nature, you know, it's great. 

And because I'm not a gym person.

Though I can do about 8 push-ups. Maybe 10 on a good day. 

Though that implies I do them every day.

Walking is my exercise. 

So when I was asked to stand in running an art session at WHALE Arts Agency I knew that although I could get the train to Haymarket then change onto another one out to Wester Hailes station I would much rather get a bit of a walk in.

So I got off at Edinburgh Gateway and had a very happy time walking my route, looking at the sculptures and plantings and wildlife of Edinburgh Park (the area, not the station), coffee and twenty minutes reading my book near Edinburgh Park (the station, not the area), enjoying the canal and hoping hoping to see an otter there as I did last time. I didn't this time.

Then two hours of lovely chat while painting birds with palette knife and acrylic at WHALE.

Then the walk back to Edinburgh Gateway, getting a bit of shopping done along the way.

Here's the walk.

tramlines seen from Edinburgh Gateway station

concrete sculpture & poetry @ Edinburgh Gateway station.
the grassy areas around here are brilliant wildflower meadows in summer.

sculpture and tram stop, The Gyle

through Edinburgh Park area the trams run off-road across lush green turf

Edinburgh Park is a place of offices - and water, reedbeds, trees, public art. A really inspiring area. Everywhere be planned so thoughtfully, bringing people into such close contact with nature.

poets' walk. Norman MacCaig

poets' walk. Naomi Mitchison.
In this photo there are also five waterbirds from four different species

male goosander, pastel, 24x30cm

Also:

female goosander

mallard

moorhen

black-headed gull

I love these tall tactile ceramic sculptures 

Paolozzi

Vulcan
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi
1999

trees, hedges, grasses, everywhere.
Everywhere should and could be like this

On the right, poles and metal cabling designed specifically to allow climbing plants to wind their way up and form a green screen. 

Edinburgh Park future plans

spot the grey wagtail.
Hint, grey wagtails are bright yellow underneath

Under the railway by Edinburgh Park station (you can also go up and over the railway via steps and bridge in the station

five minute walk uphill then onto the Union Canal

This feels like childhood. I grew up by the canal so I always love being back on one.

nature-painted shipping containers by the canal
edartfestcommunityengagement.com/wester-hailes-canal-connections

At exactly this spot, a year or few ago, I saw an otter.

I spotted bubbles in the canal.
I walked fast to the edge and stood at the very front of what you see in this photo.
The bubbles came right up to me and at the same moment that something about the bubble trail and swirling of mud made me think "otter..?..!", an otter head popped out of the water a foot from my foot.
It got a very great shock and splashed straight back in.
Gone.

This time I saw no otter.

3 bullfinches in this photo - two rusty red males & one female the same colour as most of the photo.

And a hanging poo bag, that obligatory decoration on shrubs and trees all across Scotland.

can you spot them?

off the canal and across the bridge for the last few minutes to WHALE

you can get here by bus too

WHALE Arts Agency

then avian acrylics with palette knife,
a lovely session for Art in Healthcare's Room For Art social prescribing project

gull

great tit, male (females have a much narrower black vertical chest stripe

brimstone butterfly on lavender

robin

puffin

And back onto the canal

www.edinburghpark.com

www.whalearts.co.uk

www.artinhealthcare.org.uk

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Edinburgh Gateway and Edinburgh Park stations are both in Edinburgh and trains are frequent.

Check before your journey at - www.scotrail.co.uk

Thank you for reading my Scotland By Rail blog.

Spread the word and let me know about your own favourite railway days out.

Leo du Feu

ScotRail Community Rail Champion

March 2023

#ScotlandByRail on facebook, instagram, twitter

Art Ideas - Charcoal

Charcoal. It's been around for a while. A quick Google search says 28,000 years. Think cave drawings. I really enjoyed looking at these images here - https://arthistoryproject.com/mediums/charcoal/ 

Why not give it a try? It's great for quick mark-making, great for speedy sketches outdoors, great for drawing people and animals, great for creating bold light-dark contrasting images but also great for creating softly changing tones.

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Some tips:

- do a whole quick drawing in sharp outline, then smudge bits.

- cover your whole paper with rubbed-in charcoal then draw light lines into it using a rubber or a 'putty rubber'.

- putty rubbers are a soft squishable squidgeable rubbers used often with chalks and charcoals.

- keep your rubber working by rubbing it on a clean sheet of paper to remove build-ups of charcoal.

- keep your putty rubber clean by pulling it apart over and over between your fingers. You'll see the charcoal on it gradually disappears.

- smudge using fingers, palm, bunched hand. A rag, a tissue. A paintbrush? A sponge?

- to darken your smudges: rub/smudge charcoal into the paper, draw more charcoal on top, rub that in, draw more on top, rub that in... 

- combine charcoal with chalks and 'conte crayons'.

- try adding water! Use a brush to add water, see what happens, can be a really useful technique.

- try combining with oil pastel.

- try combining with paint.

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To reduce smudging:

- Practice lifting your hand and arm off the paper as you draw to reduce the smudging. This feels pretty tricky to start with.

- If hand-lift is too tricky, place paper on top of the part of drawing you aren't currently working on to protect it from smudging.

- Work from left to right if you're right handed. Right to left if you're left handed.

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Fixatives:

- Once drawing is complete you can 'fix' it with a bought art fixative spray. Spray in a ventilated area. Hairspray can be used but be prepared for it to alter and darken your paper. 

- Some fixatives are marked as 'workable' which means you can fix a certain stage of a drawing then continue to draw more on top of that. 

- Consider an environmentally-safe fixative such as https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2016/08/09/spectrafix-fixative-indoor-use/ (contains milk so not vegan).

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Here are some drawings made using:

- charcoal (a very soft medium)

- chalk (a harder medium - darker tones are possible)

- and conte (the hardest of the three and the best for adding finer details)

The first three drawings aren't by me.

Art in Healthcare Collection, Marjorie I Campbell, Child On A Stool, 66x56cm

A lovely drawing.

- Sharp lines creating the outlines - charcoal held like pencil.

- Charcoal held on its side to create wide areas of tone.

- Little or no intentional smudging.

Art in Healthcare Collection, Tabitha Salmon, Construction Workers Moscow, 106x80cm

Another lovely one.

- Lots of smudging here to create all the soft tonal areas. Probably smudged by hand. 

- Dark detail lines then drawn or re-drawn on top of the 'smudges'. 

- The central face in particular shows lots of earlier drawing lines which have been smudged or rubbed away and add to the overall interest and three-dimensional-ness of the portrait.

Using charcoal, smudging with fingers or hand

Unicorn 'drawn' by boldly shading the shadow behind it rather than by working on the unicorn itself.

Black chalk. No smudging. A teensy touch of red chalk for the fiery head of the coot chick.

And a bit of blue chalk for background to coot portrait. See how different a coot looks when on blue background compared to on white background.

Mixed with white chalk. Drawn on brown paper. Imagine the same drawing on white paper or on blue.

Coloured chalks with charcoal or black chalk for the detail. Drawn on brown paper.

Working from a photo of stone and old bleaching wood. Trying to create lots of different textures:

- pressing hard, pressing a little

- rubbing a lot, rubbing a little

- crisp lines, crisp lines then blurred with fingers

- chalk/charcoal held on side and scuffed gently across paper (the texture at top right)

- rubber used to clean smudges off the paper where I wanted the brightest highlights.

Much as above.

Quite a lot of effort put into creating different types of marks and textures. Trying to give impression of looking across a wide stretch of lawn.

Lots of very obvious smudging, rubbing out and adding dark crisp marks back on top.

A very large charcoal and chalk drawing. 4ft high? Charcoals and chalks work so well on this scale. Lightest lines (including in the centre circle) created by rubbing back to the unmarked paper.

 Another big one. Creating depth by a background largely smudged and light, a foreground largely detailed and dark.

And a third large one. Charcoal, black chalk, black conte, white chalk. See below for zoomed-in trees at top.