Blue Sky (Hume Castle) oil on board, 19" x 13" 2010

St Mary's Loch, February, oil on paper, 15" x 21" 2010

Some new work resulting from my recent foray through The Borders. 

Also in The Borders: My debut as an illustrator for Sandy Neil's new monthly Food & Drink section of The Southern Reporter . Last month I provided the logo for the masthead, this month The Beef:

                               

Also in this week's Southern, you can read all about the truly peculiar protest against a proposed crematorium near Melrose. This involves an effigy of Alex Salmond hung from a tree, a horse's skull, some runic lettering, pentangles and a trio of half buried dolls, all carefully arranged in a cemetery. Seriously! And there's been runic style graffiti on the cooncil HQ! Reminds me a bit of an Ian Rankin yarn called The Falls.

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YouTubes

Painting in the studio today, I prodded around in my paint stash in search of something that wasn't there only to rediscover this little box of delights, above. It's an old box of Windsor & Newton oils and belonged, long ago, my Gran who was a tidy painter in her day too. Tiny wee tubes, loads of colours and all in good nick. Not sure whether to use them though, not least because I'd get through a tube in about two brushstrokes. 

Yesterday was spent up in the hills, freezing, drawing and painting winter colours:

...in the company of the faithful hound, seen here scanning the landscape for hares:

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Almost a geography lesson

Some sketches from this afternoon's excursion up Moncrieffe Hill, just below Perth. On the south side of this precipitous peak runs the river Earn, on the north the Tay. These pictures all show the Earn's meandering course across the wide fertile basin between Bridge of Earn and Abernethy, with the hills of Fife beyond. Some of those bends look ripe for a bit of ox-bow lake action, if you ask me.

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Happy new year!

A Border Conrnucopia, pen and ink 2010

A new year begun, and a new gig to go with it: I'll be doing illustration work for a Borders food writer. More details to come, but it should be cool. The new year's painting begins in earnest on monday. Snow scenes, anyone?

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New Drawings

A new tree drawing by me....

Forestry sketch, charcoal, 29" x 33" 

and some whales on the window by my daughter....

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Woe and ink

Today brought the feared/anticipated rejection by the RSA. I'd like to say with a swagger I don't give a damn but, well, I do give one, I am once more dejected, dispirited, depressed. But, es la vida and all that. Furthermore, la vida being what it is, when I took the dog for an introspective walk after getting my rejection email, I slipped on the slithery mud track, not once but twice, flat out, trainers and trousers sheathed in the thickest mud, dignity even more assaulted.

Above are two quick ink sketches of Florence and Primo that I did this afternoon (pre rejection dejection.)

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Bones

Been buying paint, looking at skeletons, drawing them, making stencils... There's an exciting project in the making with Godiva, Aware Injustice et al for the Festival (Edinburgh), it's very mysterious and hush hush right now... all will be revealed in the fullness of time. Prepare for a guerilla thrilla... 

Mountain Hare skeleton, pencil sketch

Orangutan skeleton, pencil sketch

Hare skeleton stencil

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The Heart of Scotland

A day out in...

...lobbing rocks...

...and examining them too (lots of granite)...

...also some drawing...

...all in all, not too bad a day...

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Sun and shade

The Bottom of my Garden, charcoal and pastel on card, 32" x 44", 2009

Sun, sun, sun... it's almost like being in Spain or Italy or suchlike. Except that there I would get bored of the endless weeks of blue sky and ennervating heat and wish for rain, whereas here, safe in the knowledge that rain and a returning chill are never far away, I just use the sun as an excuse to lurk in the shade and do crosswords. Today I did also do some work in the studio and some drawing al fresco at the bottom of my garden (above). 

Also today, the Jolomo awards exhibition came down in Edinburgh after its three day run. The PV on Thursday night was good, with plenty of people, some sales and then a fine culmination for my gang at La P'tite Folie on Randolph Place. The winners will be announced a week on Friday at a jazzy ceremony in Glasgow.

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Hartbeat

Winter trees, oil pastel, 16.5" x 23", 2009

So, farewell then, Tony Hart. As a child, I aspired to the glory of seeing my work displayed on the hallowed wall of 'The Gallery', for me a crucial part of Hartbeat (not to be confused with ITV's soft cop tosh Heartbeat). I seem to recall that 'The Gallery' generally boasted a couple of what were, to my infant eye, stunningly executed pencil drawings of motorcycles or somesuch showy subject sent in by 15 year old boys, nestling uneasily amongst the splattery offerings of primary schoolers.  I never entered the fray though, fearful no doubt of withering rejection; my careful Dogtanian and Wizard of Oz drawings failing to find favour with the almighty, judgemental Hart. Would this tree drawing have made the cut, I wonder?

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Paris

Paris, acrylic and conté on canvas, 12" x 12", 2008 

Finally got around to working on this little Parisian piece which is something my brother Louis has asked me to do as a present for someone. Louis lives in Paris and works for the multilingual French TV channel France 24 and as he's returning to these shores next weekend it seemed a good idea to get this done in time to hand it over direct, rather than entrusting it to the dubious care of the  international post. Other than this, I have been working some more on my commissions from Liddesdale and Oxfordshire, both of which are nearing completion.

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Back home again

Made it back from London in one piece, and had a fine time down there too, perusing galleries and museums, sketching in cafes and taking a load of photos. Saw some of my favourite paintings in the National Gallery, awesome antiquities in the British museum and enjoyed mooching around the streets, leisurely watching stuff happen. Meanwhile, my daughter was tormenting her grandparents and uncle in the Borders, behaving disgracefully as she struggled to deal with what turns out to have been incipient chicken pox! 

The UK Youth exhibition was interesting with plenty of good work on show though I thought the presentation was too crowded. Still, it was very busy and lots of money was made for the charity, including through me as I made my first London sale. Impeccable taste, them cockneys... On Friday night I went to the PV of the OF Art show in Edinburgh which  looks excellent, thanks to the hard work of Nicola Moir, and was good fun too.

A couple of pages from my sketchbook above, the first shows a gentleman kipping on the train, the second a couple in a cafe. (Try and ignore the girl's crap head, she was silhouetted but it's  still rubbish...)

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New show, very old subjects

Last December I had a little exhibition at The Forest Bookstore/gallery in Selkirk. That show really heralded the start of my landscape painting as until then I was mostly painting the city. As I was showing in the Borders I thought it appropriate, and interesting, to think about the local environment and see where I ended up. The fields took over the streets.

I am going to be exhibiting at The Forest again this December, but with a slightly different focus. A few years back I did some paintings and drawings of Trilobites, my favourite kind of fossil (everybody's got a favourite fossil, right?) and it's something I've wanted to get back into for ages. Now that I'm painting landscapes, thinking about rocks seems all the more relevant. The trilobites I've been working with mostly come from distant lands, but you can find specimens in the Borders. (I once spent a dreich Saturday trilobite hunting near Carlops.) I'm interested in the idea of painting rocks, hopefully with fossils, alongside landscapes showing where they are found. My ideas are pretty sketchy right now, and it's probably a pretty long term project, but I think I'll be working along these lines for a while. 

The pictures above show some of my Trilobite work taped up on my studio wall.

The Forest is probably pretty much the best bookshop in Scotland, and a place that shows some interesting and unusual art, such as the recent exhibition by Kate Foster. You will find it on the Market Place in Selkirk, and you won't be disappointed.
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Branching out

Tree, charcoal and pastel, 12" x 16", 2008 © Claudia Massie

Because my painting has just been annoying me, today I ventured into the wild wood and drew some trees. There are lots of madly twisty old monsters in this wood. Perthshire calls itself 'Big Tree Country' which makes me think of Oregon or somewhere, some place where it'll take you most of a morning to tramp around the massive, ridiculous trunk of a redwood. I'm looking forward to visiting The Hermitage near Dunkeld which is famous for it's gigantic Douglas Firs and seeing how they compare.

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Moo 2

Cow 4, ink on paper, 12" x 12" 2008 © Claudia Massie

Another bovine sketch...

There's a Facebook thing about this blog now though I'm not quite sure why. Anyway, if you feel the urge, you can become a 'fan' here. So far my blog has twelve fans which, quite frankly, is pretty rubbish so any more would be very welcome.

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Teamwork

Primo the Dog, mixed media, 30" x 40" © Claudia Massie and Florence Gibson

Did a bit of tag team drawing with my two year old daughter/studio assistant this afternoon. We made this homage to Primo the King of Dogs, whose magnificence demands to be recorded for posterity. See if you can guess which bits each of us did. Clue: Florence is a more dedicated disciple of the Cy Twombly school of drawing than I. 

South Solway Moss

Travel about half a mile from Kirkbride in the direction of Wigton and you will see a sign on your right, erected by English Heritage, indicating the existence of a nature reserve into which the public are encouraged to venture. There is even a hard surfaced car park, recently installed, and some well marked routes around the reserve. The routes are useful as the reserve comprises nothing but a vast peat bog; stray far from the path and you'll soon resemble a stricken, bog-sucked Sherlock Holmes character. The area is vast, and offers something close to a wilderness, despite being a working peat bog as recently as the 1980s, and having little route markers every few hundred yards. Absolutely no locals ever go to this place, and you'll be given a pretty odd look if you confess to wandering here but I like it very much, it's much better than the showy fells of the Lake District with their legions of Gortex-clad cretins. You can appreciate the curvature of the Earth in a place like this, and the immensity of the sky, which is usually being interupted by a rising curlew, some dancing lapwings and a thoughful buzzard.
So, today's picture is a pastel sketch of this area, looking south towards the blasted fells.