Winter Challenge - Interpretation

Our first Winter Challenge was to create an artistic interpretation of a photo of a landscape. This was the photo for inspiration

Angela Musil

I felt inspired by  the mood of the landscape and so I choose the medium watercolour with my favourite colour ultramarine violet. The kind of brushstrokes is depending on the quality of the paper ( rough Arches)

Graham Lock Version One

It was the foreground that for me was of most interest so I have emphasised that by redesigning its size.  The foreground is painted with an emphasis on warm colours, some of which are introduced into the sky.  I have also emphasised the essentially horizontal lines in the photo with a very horizontal format for the painting.

Graham Lock Version Two

Watercolour

Clive Dand

I was inspired by this interesting photo of the Scottish Islands to paint a very free picture in the Impressionist style of the Scottish Colourists and the Canadian Group of Seven. 

Oil

Alison Chandler

I wanted to paint simplified shapes with heightened colour so did a couple of sketches in acrylic to choose a colour palette and discovered that I quite liked the effect of the white ground showing between blocks of colour. I hadn’t planned the rocks and foreground in detail but the rocks worked out fairly well with a reasonable degree of simplification. However, I found it hard to get the grass and path in the foreground to fit the style of the rest of the painting. Not sure it’s finished yet but the oils are too sticky to work on now!

David Dixon

It was an interesting if somewhat challenging assignment.

I concentrated on the centre of the photograph and simplified what I saw, 

eliminating what I considered to be unnecessary for the composition.

This is an oil and is loosely based on Nicholas de Stael using small blocks of oil colour to give a blurred effect.

David Dixon

It was an interesting if somewhat challenging assignment.

I concentrated on the centre of the photograph and simplified what I saw, 

eliminating what I considered to be unnecessary for the composition.

This was was influenced by Hockney, using water colour. I used colour to highlight the field

contents and lift the scene.

Pat Lock

Acrylic

Gunda Cannon

There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way

Watercolour, pen and ink

330 x 230 mm

“I loved the undulating contours of the Arran photo but wanted to infuse it with more vibrant colours. It’s a calm, serene scene so I made the waves roll along peacefully with the words of the Buddha: There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way. I like the contrast between the precise strokes of the pen and the diffuse effects achieved by watercolour on wet.”

Jason Smith

The wood is “Indian bean tree” and the bowl is a variation of one of my long standing series of “centrifugal bowls”.

I orientated the woodgrain on the painted face to try to incorporate it in to my interpretation. Once background colours had been applied I then use acrylic paints “spun out” while under power on the lathe to produce the interpretation as I see it.

Rowena McWilliams

Collage