Ruth’s darkly haunting Northumbrian landscapes were certainly inspiring for me and her workshop did not disappoint. They look as if something scary is about to happen and our instruction to bring boards already painted with Prussian Blue acrylic did nothing to dispel that anticipation. But we needn’t have worried. She is a bright, happy person, eager to show and tell us all she has developed in the painting style she favours.
She works with a strap-like, flexible palette knife and paint straight out of the tube. I brought a tear-off paper palette and anticipated the need for chalk to sketch outlines, but Ruth didn’t bother with outlines. She prefers oils, as you can work them for a week or two, and water-based as they don’t have the smell of conventional oils. and can be easily cleaned up.
She uses the edge of the knife, loaded with a roll of paint about as thick as a strand of spaghetti, then applying that edge to the board and dragging it sideways to leave a clean line streaking to a smear on the forward side. It’s ideal for snowy ridges and shattered rock under snow. Prussian Blue is good for representing skies at high altitude, dark rock, snow in deep shade and indeterminate shadow, and it contrasts dramatically with white. For fissures and rock chimneys she uses a similar application of black. I painted my board with a mixture of Coeruleum Blue and Payne’s Gray, which worked well.
As a former rock climber, my inclination was to indicate routes, cracks and crevices with some accuracy, but Ruth’s approach was more abstract, concentrating on loosely defined shapes, general contours and surface textures. I copied her demonstrated painting of Annapurna, as I’m into mountains at present, but most of the class painted gentler imaginings of more tranquil scenes, I think mainly in watercolour. She sometimes introduces a human aspect to her Nepalese scenes with inclusion of multicoloured prayer flags, that lessens their austerity for less adventurous viewers.
Her great skill, was in rendering clouds, and mist boiling out of forbidding canyons. For cumulus clouds she applies heavy dollops of white paint near the middle of the cloud, then holding a dry, one- or two-inch decorator’s brush with its bristles parallel to the board, drew it outwards from the smear, radiating around its edge like rays of sunlight. Then, using a larger decorator’s brush held vertically, she scoured the thinner areas with circular movements until all streaks had disappeared, leaving a swirling cumulus mass, grading outwards to translucent mists. She urged us to clean our brushes frequently with dry paper throughout, but it was not easy to imitate her skills.
My own current work is aimed at representing “mountains that made me”, picking up on problems, perils and wonderment I met in the mountains that forced me to grow in some way, as well as some of the wildlife it is such a joy to meet in wild places. Thank you, Ruth for an exciting and worthwhile session that extends my work into new areas. The picture above shows my efforts at the workshop.
Dorian Pritchard
Friends of the Hatton 