Tag Archives: Paintbox Art School

Expressive Floral Art, Mixed Media Art Process

Fluid Lines, Floral Structure

June 28, 2021 ronniecruwys Leave a comment

The Flower Shop at Silverbirch – Clyde Valley

There’s a new florist in the Clyde Valley. It’s exciting to witness this new business appear. The Flower Shop at Silverbirch (Silverbirch Garden Centre), is full of life and colour and only a few minutes from where we live in Hazelbank.

It’s all the more exciting for me as my new body of expressive flower work is now on the walls and available to buy from The Flower Shop at Silverbirch.

As artists, we are always looking for outlets to support and collaborate with us at various stages of our work. These last few years it has felt like many doors have closed; to have some open up feels so encouraging! I would like to extend a big thank you and a warm welcome to the Clyde Valley to @john_gold_floristry for giving me this opportunity to share and sell my new work.

Summer Garden Extravaganza workshop at Paintbox School of Art, Cockenzie

You might be wondering how I’ve moved from drawing buildings to flowers. In short it’s in response to living on an orchard and wanting to express the vitality of the plant world. As ever, Paintbox – the art school by the sea, was there with a four day workshop ‘Garden Extravaganza’ where we immersed ourselves in the structure, textures, colour and variety of the gardens at Cockenzie House.

Jemma Derbyshire and Robin Wu – Paintbox tutors

There’s a clear process as to how to approach a subject at Paintbox – I like the structure of the exploration – settling into a particular place in the gardens, responding to colours, forms, textures, shape, line and movement and simplifying what we experience into bold black and white drawings at a big scale – then moving along. Here we were given a 4 leaf concertina sketch book, each page A2 in size. We prepared the paper with white emulsion paint to give a tooth and texture.

*Large scale concertina sketchbook for black and white studies*

Things move at quite a pace and next up are some fast colour plays on what we have experienced to make material for collage. It also makes a great surface to cut down into a small concertina sketchbook – everything has a use!

*Hanging our work out to dry in the garden*

Next along was to find details from our black and white explorations that called for further development. I loved the sea thistle and so we looked at several colour palettes adding in our collage material as a disruptor.

*Exploring colour palettes for our subjects*

Here you can see how these giant drawings of nasturtium leaves serve to form the base of these paintings – the flat round leaves forming a contrast to the wild lines of the sea thistles.

Foxgloves are a favourite of mine as they appear in the warmth of summer with their vibrant pinks contrasting against rich purples of the undergrowth.

We taped off sections and worked freely on large sheets of paper. Although time ran out, I knew what to work on when I got back home.

*‘Sea Thistle Morning’ (top) White Swans (left) and Summer Dew (right)’*

It’s always a highlight to see the work finished, cropped, framed and named.

Many thanks to John Gold for the thoughtful display – here are a few on the walls.

*‘White Swans’ and ‘Summer Dew’* framed and on the walls of **The Flower Shop at Silverbirch**

Silverbirch Garden Centre is a great destination here in the Clyde Valley and the Flower Shop is located right beside the main entrance, open Tuesday to Sundays, 10-4. If you are in the area – why not call in?

Thanks for reading

Ronnie 🙂

Pen and ink drawing, Sketch book, Uncategorized

Rekindling the Sketchbook

June 22, 2021 ronniecruwys 3 Comments

My ‘handbag sketchbook’ has been dormant for a while. It’s a hand-sized book which I normally sketch in when out and about but over the last year or so, trips out have been straight to the point and home again.

I realised how much I had missed capturing some of the day-to-day aspects of life when I was waiting for my second Covid jab. This chap was ahead of me in the fast moving queue at Ravenscraig Sports Centre and it struck me that I should get the moment down even if it was just a few lines.

I was surprised at how l had fallen out of the habit of these short sketches – I’ve been drawing and painting plenty of other things (more on this another time) but these sketches are my visual diary. Life goes past so quickly that I sometime wonder what I was doing last week and these capture the moments when I pause.

These sketches are for me – I don’t mind how haphazard they are as long as I sketch something of the moment. I had added a wash of yellow ochre on one of the pages – it’s a simple but effective background to liven up a few hasty lines.

A ten minute wait for a routine vet visit was a great opportunity to sketch the profile of the church at Lesmahagow.

*Lesmahagow church – waiting outside the vets*

Here’s my first café sketch in over a year – looking up to the shelf where there was a line up of colourful Edinburgh Gin bottles.

A visit at last to see my sister in York for her birthday. She placed these beautiful lily-of -the valley flowers in a vase that came from Kerry, the part of Ireland that my mother came from.

In-person classes have resumed at Paintbox – the Art School by the Sea – over in Cockenzie. You can catch the feel of a place in just a few lines – enough to remind you of the day.

If I arrive at Cockenzie a little earlier than class starts, I have a coffee from my flask and sketch the view from the car.

The perspective is skew-whiff on this one below but I loved the crow-step gables against the red roof and bright blue sky.

I’ve been over to Cockenzie many times but not stayed to have a look further up the coast so we set Midsummer’s Day aside to go out to Bass Rock. Another few minutes waiting our turn to board the boat and I sketched what was in front of me.

Bass Rock is spectacular! Located just off the coast of North Berwick, it’s high-rise accommodation for 150,000+ gannets! We had booked on an hour trip which took us right up to the side of the rock where we got a great view of the birds and their young chicks.

The only way to pick up where you left off is to turn the page and pick up a pen.

As always, thanks for reading 🙂

Ronnie

Art, Painting,, Scotland, Tolbooth Lanark

Hebridean Waters

August 14, 2020 ronniecruwys 2 Comments

A new exhibition went up in the Tolbooth Lanark last weekend, titled ‘Coasts and Rivers’. This is Lanark’s invitation for local artists to participate in Scotland’s 2020 celebration of:

‘Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters, a year that will spotlight, celebrate and promote opportunities to experience and enjoy Scotland’s unrivalled coasts and waters encouraging responsible engagement and participation from the people of Scotland and our visitors’.

It’s a step away from my usual buildings but for the past couple of years I’ve been exploring ways to express the beautiful landscape up here through attending a variety of art classes.

I’d been attending a year long drawing/mixed media course held at Paintbox School of Art in Cockenzie until lockdown threw that curve ball. Some of the classes went online so I signed up for their artist’s retreat and one of the morning meditation classes had the theme of oceans.

It involved filling a dozen or so sheets of A4 paper with a whole variety of fluid marks, the movement of ink on wet paper flowing to the sounds of the sea shore. I used three inks – Paynes grey and two blues, plenty of water for misting, sticks and feathers and the bottle dropper to make marks.

I set aside the papers to use as collage for the entry to the Oceans exhibition, thinking about the image of the Hebridean sea that I photographed on our way to St Kilda a few years ago. I wrote about it here.

Some weeks later, I prepared a surface with broad sweeping brush marks in similar colours but using acrylic paint to form a foundation layer, adding in some textured medium. I then tore a few sheets of the collage paper into narrow curved strips and layered them on to the base layer.

I then used inktense sticks to add highlights and deeper shadows.

Finally, to add the metallic sheen to the highlights, I added silver gouache using a cocktail stick held on its side to create irregular fillets of light.

Here’s the finished artwork. I did a double check on the tonal values by seeing how it looked in black and white and was happy with the result.

‘Hebridean Waters’ framed and ready for the exhibition! There’s a wide and interesting variety of work up in the Tolbooth, I think the subject has been appealing and just what we need to get us back in the flow!

Thanks for reading and if you live near Lanark, hope you can come along. The subject has generated some really beautiful and soothing art.

Ronnie 🙂

Clyde Valley, Sketch book

passing time

October 23, 2019 ronniecruwys 2 Comments

Dalserf Parish Church, dating back at least to mid 17th C.

These last few days have had a theme – archives. Actually, the theme has woven between archived sketchbooks of artists who have gone before us and sketching graveyards with some monumental archival gravestones.

I spent yesterday morning with my Paintbox classmates and the archivist at Edinburgh Gallery of Modern Art Two soaking up every detail we could from the sketchbooks of Mary Newbery, William Crozier, William MacTaggart, Joan Eardley, James Mackintosh Patrick, Josef Sekalski and Oskar Kokoshka. All these sketchbooks are available for anyone to look at by appointment. No photos, but we can use pencils to make sketches and notes…

Making quick notes on the sketching techniques of William Crozier and William MacTaggart

It’s very moving being present to witness these private moments of an artist. Through their sketches, they share that same frame of mind when they were in that sketching space, recording what they saw, then years pass and here we are, in the Reading Room, observers for a few passing minutes, seeing with their eyes.

James Mackintosh Patrick -exquisite sketches

After our time in the Reading Room, we went out with our own sketchbooks to find a quiet corner and sketch. Dean graveyard is right behind the gallery and it’s a mini-city of high-rise head stones. The trees are winning though with their majestic presence and golden canopies.

Mary Newbery’s sketchbook included a line drawing of flowers against a painted green/grey background. Nothing at all as clumsy as this sketch – but this will remind me of her work.

Today I was back getting ready for my exhibition at the Tolbooth which will be on from next Monday, here in Lanark. As you know, all my streets are drawn as archives but there’s always so much more I want to include.

When I drew Kirk Road Dalserf, I felt that the street was incomplete without some sketch of this significant Covenanter’s church so I’m happy that I completed a sketch today. The original will be framed and on display by next week.

I’m planning to post more about my work that’s going up in the Tolbooth as the people who pass by this page are miles away from here. I’m happy enough to share my work as long as you are kind enough to give up your time to read.

This post is dedicated to Colina, our neighbour here on the Braes, who passed away last night taking almost a century of memories with her.

Thanks for reading, Ronnie

Drawing the Street