I woke early on a number of occasions while we were in Scotland, and when the sun is rising in a place like Galloway, there is nothing better than an early morning walk!
Cairnholy
Our stay in Scotland was not all sunshine and sunsets. It was pretty damp the day we went to Cairnholy, but not enough to put us off the visit and, in fact, the weather probably made the experience more enjoyable.
The atmosphere in the misty hills of Galloway in SW Scotland and the fact that we were the only people there made it me feel much closer to those that had originally constructed these neolithic burial monuments.
Bonfire in Paradise
And as the sunset faded, so the warmth and the light of the fire took over alongside the sound of evening birds, the murmur of voices and the crackle of the fire.
Josef Herman Schools Award Project 2014
Art education is wide ranging and there are many different approaches to it, but at its core is learning to see. The primary and most effective way to learn to see is to draw. This, surely, must be at the beginning of every artist’s career – i.e. the moment, as children, we pick up a pencil, crayon, brush and make a mark with it.
Last week I was working with the Josef Herman Art Foundation Cymru on their 2014 Schools Award project. Following a tour of Ystradgynlais with Josef (1911 – 2000) played by actor Adrian Metcalfe and the “Clerk to the District Council” played by Sonia Beck, both from Lighthouse Theatre in Swansea, we ran workshops in drawing. We viewed the Foundation’s collection of Herman’s works in “The Welfare” and referenced a set of images provided by the Tate Museum for our drawing. We used both traditional drawing materials (pencil and charcoal on paper) and iPads. Sketchbook Pro has the facility to record the drawing you do on the iPad and you can see a couple of examples from the children at the bottom of this post.
Sonia invited us all back to the year 1954 when Josef Herman lived and worked in Ystradgynlais (for 11 years). She and Adrian did an excellent job of drawing us into believing that they were the real people which confused some of the children as they knew that he had died in 2000!
Sea and Sky – the absence of sunlight
Absence of sunlight does not necessarily mean the scene will be less beautiful / dramatic / atmospheric.
These photos I took on the Galloway coast in SW Scotland are almost Rothko-esque in their subtlety of colour, tone and texture. The sea merged into the sky but as the colour of one reflects the colour of the other, I guess that merging should be expected. It is just the differing textures or a hint of land (rock) that allows us to understand the view.
New Spring StillWalks Videos
This week’s featured StillWalks video is a sample of one from a new set of videos I have produced featuring Lower Lliw Reservoir.
The full set of four walks (one for each season) will be available soon on DVD and this will include an introductory video. The HD videos will be available to purchase online at a later date.
The walk round the lower reservoir is beautiful at all times of the year and I hope that you will enjoy this short sample. When the DVD is published in a few weeks, it will be available through the cafe at Lliw Reservoir and also via the StillWalks website.