Sue Lewington

My last entry about going out and painting with water colours reminded me of learning to paint with watercolours when I was a teenager. I had like most kids been painting with cheap water colours and powder-paints since I was small but on a family holiday to the island of St. Martins in the Isles of Scilly when I was about 14 (so that would be 1993 /94), my parents discovered a talented water colour artist on the island who was running her own gallery and decided to pay for me to have a lesson with her. Although, in actuality this then resulted in me spending most of the rest of the holiday painting in watercolours and calling back to the poor lady’s studio on a number of occasions to show her my efforts. I have just found that this artist is still painting, her name is Sue Lewington. She does not have much of a formal web presence, but rather exists online by reputation (there are pages and pages of people commenting on her work and courses). I would like to say thank you to her for teaching me to paint all those years ago (I was much improved on my return from the Scilly’s); although I think I might need to go back for some more lessons now.

How do you make painting more efficient?

With the weather the recently improving, I have started to think about working (more specifically painting – I already do most of my photography) outside; I have always fancied being a plein air painter. When I was a teenager I used to do a lot more drawing and painting outside than I do now, particularly watercolours, and I have started to wonder if I should not take this media up again.

My work on landscapes, both the photography and the models has made me think that I should also spend more time drawing and painting landscapes so as to better understand the structure and the shapes of the land. I have been enjoying using pen and ink in my illustrations of moons and craters for my ‘landscape generator’ project and watercolour is a similar media. I do struggle with the lightness of touch required in watercolour painting but this should improve with practice and so in this sense there should be no excuse for not getting out and making a start.

One of the problems I have though with plein air is the amount of time taken up by the activity, not just the actual time painting but the getting to the location and the preparation of your equipment beforehand. Don’t get me wrong I think that it is a perfect activity: painting, walking, fresh air, beautiful scenery what’s there not to like? However, both my family and college are keen to make my art economically viable and I worry that disappearing off for the whole day to paint is a risky economic activity; but then we are told that we should not think like this about art. I guess it might be alright if you can complete several paintings whist out or if you can somehow speed the process up? It was with this in mind that I had a brain-wave, what if I combined my painting with my exercise, that way I’ll be doing two useful activities at once and if I run to or from my painting location then I will speed the activity up.

A couple of days after having this idea I packed a small rucksack with paints, brushes, pens, pencils, ink and paper and set off up the hill above our house with the intension of finding a spot to paint!

Ultimately the experiment was reasonably successful; I briskly walked up the hill, so as not to get too sweaty and out of breath before I began. I found a good spot beside the road and started work. I got a couple of images completed and then ran back. The only issue was that I was still gone for a good two hours, although I only saw one car on the road the whole time I was out and at the end of the day you can’t put a price on that, or on art it would seem!

Lifelong Learning Wildlife Photography Class:

My current wildlife photography group working at Ynys Hir and Ynyslas in North Ceredigion.

Teaching at home:

Occasionally I also teach photography tuition privately. For the last three weeks I have had two ladies visit me on Thursday afternoons to further their photographic skills. Here are a couple of photographs that we worked during last weeks class; taken after a short walk around the farm.

Ivy growing up the side of a tree. Textures and Details.

Dandilion in Colour? Experimenting with layers in Photoshop.