Plein-Air Painting in the Lake District

While I am away on my Denver adventure, I thought you might like to see some more of the sketching I did on my week off in the Lake District. With everything that I have had going on recently, I haven't had time to scan anything, but luckily I remembered to take photos of quite a few, in-situ. It is fun anyway, to see the sketch against the subject matter.

The whole time I was there, I was struggling against what I considered to be too much like realism:

...as opposed to my attempt at a more expressive abstraction of what was in front of me. It swung back and forth, often to do with how warmed up I was (in both senses of the word - it got jolly nippy up on some of those hills!)

I took some charcoal and a hardback, A3 cartridge pad as well as my paints. It was a welcome rest in some ways, to be back in my comfort-zone a little more, drawing, rather than painting. Very messy business though!

I tried the same view in paint, with a touch of watercolour pencil, for definition. This is in an A4 pad:

We finished the trip at Wastwater, which is my favourite lake. It's possibly my favourite place ever. There's such wild and windswept drama to it, with a thrilling atmosphere of foreboding created by the ridiculously high scree-sloped which plunge down into the dark, deep water. We didn't get there until our final afternoon, as you have to go a very long way round to access the valley - there's just the one road in, which grinds to a halt when it hits the mountain at the end of the lake. It's partly that remoteness though, which keeps it a bit special. 

I had never seen Wastwater as beautiful though, with the low sun picking out all the contours and lighting up great patches of purple heather. I wanted to stay forever, but we had to start our drive home...