Spent an inspiring day with an artist from Australia, focused on information gathering on location — aka sketching, but with the focus on looking, creating visual me and making visual notes rather than on creating beautifully finished sketches.
We started at Staffin Beach, then onto the ‘other’ side of Trotternish at that favourite spot of mine, the trees and river in the Uig woodland. The leaves are starting to turn autumnal colours and dropping. There’s a sprinkling of yellow leaves stuck to rocks in the river, little specks of glowing yellow in the shadows, and puddles of them jammed up against rocks in the stream.
The colour of the water was an interesting challenge: how to make it read as water when it’s mostly deep greens and browns, dark in the shadows and crystal clear where it’s still. I think the answer lies in some of the light greys of the overcast sky reflected in the ripples, and texture paste.
