Observing the landscape

To celebrate his 40th year of writing for Leisure Painter, David Bellamy discusses some of the pivotal moments he has had as a teacher and explorer – and talks about his development as an artist

To celebrate his 40th year of writing for Leisure Painter, David Bellamy discusses some of the pivotal moments he has had as a teacher and explorer – and talks about his development as an artist

One of the most rewarding aspects of my painting career has been my relationship with Leisure Painter, and this July marks the 40th anniversary of when I wrote my first article for the magazine. Before I became a professional artist, much of my inspiration came from Leisure Painter and The Artist so I was delighted when Cherry Briers, who was then the editor, not only accepted my offer of an article on sketching mountains and moorlands, but she asked for two to run in succession. In those days the magazine was mainly in black and white, with articles from such luminaries as Edward Wesson, Rowland Hilder and

Ernest Savage. The July 1981 issue cost just 60 pence. Stage-by-stage paintings were rare, as you needed to be a good photographer and it was not until I bought a medium format camera much later that I really got to grips with it all.

My first article exhorted folk to get out with their sketchbooks to sketch in a shower of rain in order to capture that exciting glint of light on rocks and roofs before it was lost as the objects dried out. Nature was my teacher, showing me how to inject atmosphere into a watercolour sketch, letting colours run into one another – rain is immeasurably effective in creating happy accidents and softening edges – although, with the latter, it took some time to drive it home and improve my work. A slight skitting of raindrops on the Malvern Hills sketch (below right) gives an idea of how I worked in less than perfect conditions. I combined my love of climbing mountains and being in the great outdoors with my love of painting and, when you have such a strong affinity with your subject, it certainly helps your work.

Inspiration and adventure

Life has always been one big adventure for me and my love of nature drew me into many environmental campaigns. I used exhibitions to highlight threats to the landscape and this is something that

can give landscape and wildlife artists much publicity and get your work better known.

In the early days much of my mountain work was rather gloomy, as I encountered too many bad-weather days in the British mountains. When I first visited the Dolomites in Italy, however, everything changed. The Dolomitic limestone glowed with colour and light, particularly when directly lit in strong sunshine, and my colours changed overnight. I could still have my moody moments, but they tended to be brighter and so the Snowdonian crags caught on a grim day became alive with Dolomitic colour.

You can see the contrast of the change in the illustrations of rock structures depicted in Shenavall Bothy (above) when compared to Mullach an Rathain (right).

I nearly didn’t make it to Shenavall.

After many miles hiking across the Letterewe wilderness, I came to a swollen river as the winter night settled in.

With not enough daylight left to seek an alternative crossing, I plunged in up to my chest, with a heavy rucksack and fumbled my way across the swirling torrent then collapsed exhausted on the far bank. Only luck helped me find the bothy in complete darkness, to my immense relief.

Inspiration from water

In Wind-driven Surf at Broad Haven

(page 16) I aimed to capture the sensation of surf hammering onto shapely rocks and being tossed high into the air. This took a while to complete, because of the need to allow the painting to dry at times. Painted as a sketch on watercolour paper on the spot in the early 1990s, I can still feel the sensation of wind and spray on my face when I look at it. At that time, I still wasn’t softening off enough of my hard edges and you can see that Ramsey Island in the distance stands out hard-edged as well as much of the spray and the white top of the wave.

While it’s good to show the top of the wave as hard-edged and standing out clearly, these days I would soften off that long edge in places – especially close to the main rock – to give a little variation in a line going across almost the whole width of the sketch.

Caledonian pines can make a splendid focal point in the natural environment, and they break up the horizontal shorelines beautifully in Still Waters,

Loch Assynt (left). I love pastel for rendering interesting skies, although I haven’t painted in pastels for a long time now. Reliving this scene really inspires me to get out my pastels again.

Painting holidays

Having read of my sketching exploits in dodgy situations, some of my students would arrive with rucksacks, boots and all the kit necessary for an Everest expedition, expecting some truly adventurous sketching. It was soon obvious that there was a call for sketch-and-walk courses and these developed into action courses, where we would include hiking, sea-canoeing, scrambling and even a day out caving on one course. Serendipity occurred on that day when a local caver

abseiled down a shaft while the students were sketching at the bottom. I yelled up to ask if he would come down extremely slowly so that the students had a figure to include and the chap was extremely obliging. Interestingly, almost every student produced the best painting of the week in their cave painting, as they really had to observe carefully an unfamiliar aspect of landscape painting.

Evolution

It’s fascinating to see how landscape painting has evolved over the last four decades. While we still hold great interest in the traditional scene, many artists now work in exciting ways, ranging from pure abstract to simply exploring energetic new colour responses to the natural environment. It is vital that we keep pure watercolour techniques alive, yet at the same time experiment with fresh ideas, all of which makes art so absorbing.

In all this, Leisure Painter is an influential conduit in bringing these ideas to the attention of so many enthusiastic students, as well as keeping alive the tradition of pure watercolour. It’s been a great pleasure working with the lovely folk at the magazine all these years and, as one of my French students recently said, ‘It’s like a ray of sunshine when it comes every month!’.

Chasm of Light, Trygghamna Sunlight breaks through dense cloud and dances on the outlet from Harrietbreen Glacier on Spitzbergen, as purple sandpipers flit around the shoreline and mountains come and go in the mist. I’d gone ashore with Rosemary Hale, one of several friends who joined me on this expedition to the Arctic in 2008, to sketch the glacier snout while the others stayed on the expedition boat. The striking granulations in the Daniel Smith lunar blue are accentuated by the Rough paper, helping to spice up a quiet part of the right-hand sky, while the birds become the focal point.

Cottage in the Valley, watercolour and Daniel Smith watercolour ground on Waterford 300lb NOT paper, 6x7in. (15x18cm). While I love the outstanding qualities of traditional watercolour, so many new products and materials, some of which have nothing to do with art, are being used in innovative ways with the medium. It’s exciting to explore new ways of working. Here I plastered Daniel Smith watercolour ground over the entire paper, apart from the upper sky, using a painting knife. This created fabulous textural effects, including some clouds in the sky. I left it to dry for a couple of days then applied the paint.

Farm in the Malvern Hills This simple watercolour sketch on cartridge paper carried out back in February 1981 was achieved in around four or five minutes, laying on the washes for sky and the hills and working wet into wet on a gloomy day. Having laid the washes, I worked into the wet paper immediately with a black Prismalo watercolour pencil to create the building, gate posts and willows. The urgency forced on me by bad weather actually became a driving force in my desire to master watercolour.

Shenavall Bothy, watercolour on 140lb Waterford NOT paper, 10x16in. (25.5x40.5cm). I painted this in 1985, and in order to get far enough away from the building I had to climb well above it – not my favourite perspective, but it worked. Beinn Dearg Mor rose high above the far side of the valley with the Torridonian sandstone terracing standing out clearly. Not only have I over-elaborated the crag detail, but painted it stark black, even though it’s a mixture of French ultramarine and burnt umber. Compare this treatment to that in my much later painting of Mullach an Rathain (opposite). The one positive point in this work though is the faithful rock structure, illustrating how the crags shape the buttresses, gullies and peaks. You can see how I have suggested the steep slopes of the central and right-hand peaks by judicious positioning of the rocks as they descend the slopes.

Still Waters, Loch Assynt, pastel on Ingres paper, 11x17in. (28x43cm)

Mullach an Rathain, watercolour on Waterford 140lb NOT paper, 13x10in. (33x25.5cm). This is a fairly recent painting from a sketch I carried out high up on the Horns of Alligin, looking across at the subject. Note how I have given the Torridonian sandstone terracing more colour than in the early Shenavall painting (left) and brought in mist lower down to lose much of the detail.

Wind-driven Surf at Broad Haven,

watercolour on 90lb NOT watercolour paper, 6x8in. (15x20.5cm) Demonstrating in the rain One of the great advantages of painting in the Alps is that you can work on superb high-level views while you sip a cappuccino in comfort at a refuge. One of the great disadvantages is that you may well be sitting in discomfort in falling rain.

Cornish Creek, watercolour on Rough 140lb Blue Lake blue-grey paper, 12x17½in. (30.5x44.5cm). For this painting I brought out the highlights with white gouache, otherwise the painting would be quite dull on such a strongly tinted paper. The scene was painted almost exactly as I saw it so there were few modifications to the composition.