Landscape Impressions Gouache Paintings - Group Display

Here are all my current landscape impressions grouped together, which I displayed at an exhibition featuring art by members of the 'ASSOCIATION PEINTRES DANS LA RUE' (Painters in the street), a local art group who display at various venues around the Alpes Maritimes during the summer months.

Gouache Abstract Landscape Paintings on canvas board

The paintings have been mounted on MDF

to fit into an 18x24cm standard frame.

All the paintings have been varnished with acrylic varnish

for protection allowing them to be framed without glass.

Landscape Impressions VII and VIII - abstract gouache paintings

Here are another two in the series.

Landscape Impressions #VII by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish.
Purchase this painting HERE

Landscape Impressions #VIII by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish.
Purchase this painting HERE 

These little paintings make an ideal gift, they are mounted on black coated hardboard sized to fit into a standar photo frame.

The varnish on these little gouache paintings give a tough,
resilient coating that protects them from moisture and allows framing without glass.

they are mounted on black MDF board to fit directly into an 18x24cm frame

Landscape Impressionss V and VI - abstract gouache paintings

These two use the same colour combinations, one with a high horizon line and the other with a low one.

 Landscape Impressions #V by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish.
Purchase this painting HERE
These little paintings make an ideal gift

The varnish on this little gouache painting gives it a tough,
resilient coating that protects it from moisture and means it can be framed without glass.

It has been mounted on black MDF board to fit directly into an 18x24cm frame

Landscape Impression #VI by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish.
Purchase this painting HERE
These little paintings make an ideal gift

The varnish on these little gouache paintings give a tough,
resilient coating that protects them from moisture and allows framing without glass.

they are mounted on black MDF board to fit directly into an 18x24cm frame

These have given me the idea of doing a series with limited colour combination maybe red and yellow, blue and green and so on.

Landscape Impressions IV - abstract gouache painting

A slightly different feel in this painting. I like the merging of the colours in this one with just a hint of recognisable features.

 Landscape Impressions #IV by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish.

These little paintings make an ideal gift
Purchase this painting HERE

The varnish on this little gouache painting gives it a tough,
resilient coating that protects it from moisture and means it can be framed without glass.

It has been mounted on black MDF board, painted black to fit directly into an 18x24cm frame.

Landscape Impressions III - abstract gouache painting

Number 3 in the landscape impressions series.

Landscape Impression III  by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish

The varnish on this little gouache painting gives it a tough,
resilient coating that protects it from moisture and means it can be framed without glass.

It has been mounted on black MDF board to fit directly into an 18x24cm frame.
Purchase this unique painting HERE

A different view of the landscape to give the impression of birch trees. I started this in the same way as the previous two to give the background colours. Then  using thick gouache and a flat brush, I criss crossed the different colours to give an impression of  autumn woodland. After this had dried, - and that is the beauty of gouache it dries almost instantly - I used another flat brush to wipe away the paint for the tree trunk impressions and then worked back into the silhouettes left with grey and white to give the tree trunk markings. I finished off with the twig squiggles.

Landscape Impressions II - abstract gouache painting

The second in the series this time with more of a 'waterscape' feel to it.

Landscape Impressions #II  by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
coated with acrylic varnish
These small paintings make an ideal gift
Purchase this painting HERE

The varnish on this little gouache painting gives it a tough, resilient coating that protects it from moisture and means it can be framed without glass.
It has been mounted on MDF board to fit directly into an 18x24cm frame.

Landscape Impressions I - Gouache painting

This is an ongoing project to extend my knowledge of gouache. I have always enjoyed ethereal watercolour paintings that suggest the information but with no detail. As I was playing around with the gouache I wondered if I could achieve that effect with gouache. Here is my first try:

 Landscape impression I  by Marion Hedger

12.5x17.5cm (5"x7") Gouache on canvas board
Purchase this unique painting HERE

I coated the canvas with a ground of dark orangy colour acrylic.  Then roughly mapped in the design with the gouache and gave it a spritz with water, turning the support now and again to let the paint run but generally letting it go where it wanted to.  I then worked back into it, ocassionally spritzing again. In the final pass I tried to recapture some of the highlights as these had sunk into the support and some areas were qute dull where the paint had run. It was difficult to know how much reworking to do and how much could be achieve with gouache. When finished I varnished it with spray acrylic gloss varnish which lifted some of the dulled colours.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed working on the canvas as I thought it might be a little rough, but the gouache behaved well and it was stable enough to withstand the spritzing and the reworking and it had a nice feel to it while I was painting.

Not a watercolour 'ethereal' look, but I like the result. What do you think?

Through the woods - 2nd Gouache Experiment

This is my second attempt at a gouache landscape.

Through the woods

Gouache painting by Marion Hedger

21x30cm on thin black card.

I really like the effect of this one. I am still learning how to use the gouache and I have kept this fairly loose with the black ground peeping throught, hopefully giving it some harmony. As I still have my limited palette of kid's paints I could not mix all the colours I needed, but to me it does have a nice energy about it.

This is from one of my photos while walking through the woods close by. We do not get a typical autumn here, it is a mixture between a few coloured and dry leaves and fresh growth that sprouts after the autumn storms following a very dry summer. I hope I have captured some of that feeling.

Landscape - gouache study

This is an experiment in using gouache, the first time I have used this medium.

 Gouache landscape study

16x21cm (6.5"x8.5") on blue/gey paper.

This is painted very quickly with a very limited palette very bright blue, pink and yellow plus a black and white. I was looking around to see what I could paint with while sitting on the sofa as I have a sore throat at the moment and didn't want to venture into my cold studio.

I used the paint straight out of the tube with very little mixing on the palette and hardly any water. I was very surprised at how fast they dried, but they were easy to go over with a second layer. A good medium to use to stop you fiddling with the brushstroke. The bright pink in the sky is because I ran out of white paint to mix it with.

Once I got used to how they reacted on the paper, I found I really liked using them and the effect they gave. I used my granddaughter's paints that I purchased for her - cheap and cheerful - as she likes to feel she is using 'real' paints - she's becoming an art supply critic at the age of 7! So I would imagine that artist quality paint would be even better to work with.

 After Peploe still life by Marion Hedger

Watercolour on140lb watercolour paper

This small painting (10x15cm) was painted as part of the wetcanvas.com Master's challenge project. I concentrated on the Scottish Colourists for the series. When I started I did not know much about any of them, but by the end of the project I was a fan of Peploe.

Mondrain Windmill Acrylic Painting

 Mondrain Windmill

Acrylic painting

30x30cm on watercolour paper

This was a fun painting, painted in response to the acrylic forum challenge on Wetcanvas.com this month. The reference photo was a windmill and the challenge to paint in one of the many styles Mondrain used during his career. I chose to abstract the reference with coloured blocks of paint. I used photoshop as part of my process. After cropping the photo, I roughly traced the outline with lines and then blocks and coloured them using blue, red, yellow, green and black. After another look at Mondrain's work I realised he very rarely used green. I removed the layer containing the photo of the original and played around with the shapes and colours before printing out the reference. As I was drawing it up and painting the picture I refined the painting, removing shapes and changing the colours. It was a very interesting exercise and I could have simplified even further. It certainly made some of his work come to life for me.

Cup cake fun

Cup cakes seem to be the rage at the moment - and the best part is that they have no hip expanding calories! I painted these fun paintings as a break from a more detailed iris painting which I was finding difficult to complete.

They are all 5"x7"

Acrylic on canvas board

My website http://artbymarion.co.uk/

Visit my art of flowers blog

My art products on Zazzle

Contact me about this or other paintings HERE

Red Hibiscus in oil pastel

Red Hibiscus

Oil pastel on black Somerset Velvet paper

30x40cm

This lovely sub-tropical flower is a true sign that summer is here in South of France. The black ground lifts the colours and really makes them sing.

Pansies in pen and wash

Pansies in pen and wash

5x7" on watercolour paper

A quick sketch depicting that spring favourite, pansies. Postcard sized sketches are fun to do and retain some of the spontaneity that is often lost on larger paintings. Using pen and wash allows you to paint more freely as many things are just suggested and detail is unnecessary.

Limited brushstrokes exercise

This painting was in response to a weekly challenge on dailypaintworks.com. The challenge was to assemble 2 to 3 items into a still life arrangement and calculate the minimum number of brushstrokes required for the painting.

Blue vase, bowl and pear still life limited brushstroke challenge

A4 size, oil on canvas board

I set up the still life on a glass sheet over a dark red cloth to see if I could capture some reflections and then illuminated it with a flood light on the right. I drew in the design with a watercolour pencil, indicating the large masses. I calculated I needed a minimum of 32 brushstokes to create the painting.

I had two practice runs on scrap cardboad coated in gesso before committing to the canvas baord. This practice helped me to find out how to manipulate the brush to get the long gestural strokes in one pass and what thickness of paint to use. With my first effort, I stopped counting my strokes after about 50 LOL. My second effort was more successful as I realised I had to thin the paint a little so that it would flow more easily. When I moved onto the canvas board the surface was much easier to handle and I had ALMOST finished at 32 strokes but couldn't resist some fiddling. So I used about 40 strokes to get this far. I mainly used a large No.10 brush which certainly helps with the no fiddling rule!

This was a very good exercise, and I learnt quite a bit while doing this. I am still a bit hesitant when using oils as I am fairly new to them and have not explored it enough yet to feel truly confident with all the techniques. Using cardboard certainly helps to loosen up the painting style as there is nothing to loose apart from paint!

This painting no longer exists - I have scraped off the paint and will reuse the board for another trial.

Black, White and Red landscape abstract

This is the second painting for the September challenge on the Daily Painters International blog where I missed the deadline. This was an abstract landscape that sort of developed as I went along. I mixed the greys on the paper as I went along. Adding the red was a last minute decision.

 Abstract landscape, black and white plus one by Marion Hedger

Acrylic and gel medium, palette knife

A4 on cardboard 

The three black and white paintings in this series were done very loosely and quite quickly. Perhaps that is why I enjoyed creating them as I had no preconceived ideas and nothing to lose as they were an cardboard cutoffs. The tree is a nod to my location here in the Alpes Maritime, Provence.

Here is a close up of the palette knife work:

Black and White plus one III

This is the third and final study in black and white plus one colour. This one is smaller than the other two and on canvas board with a black gesso ground.

 Abstract tree, black and white and red

10x15 cm (4x6") on canvas board

This exercise was interesting and tells me that I definitely need to loosen up in my normal work and this is an idea I am thinking of taking further - maybe not the white and black theme but definitely the loose palette knife work and using the gel to thicken up the paint. As this was only an exercise I used paint which was very fluid and not true artist paint. I wasn't sure if the gel (Golden gel medium) would work to give me a 3D effect but it worked well.

Black and White plus one acrylic painting

Abstract seascape, black and white plus one by Marion Hedger

Acrylic and gel medium, palette knife

A4 on black card

My website http://artbymarion.co.uk/

Visit my art of flowers blog

My art products on Zazzle

Contact me about this or other paintings HERE

 I missed the deadline on the September challenge from Daily Painters International Gallery of painting in black and white plus one colour, as I was away on hols and forgot to post my paintings before I went away.
I used acrylic because I do not have a black oil paint and I could not achieve a nice black by mixing. I also decided to try two additional things as well as the black and white challenge, (I should learn to take one step at a time LOL), palette knife painting and abstracting.
I had a vague idea to do a landscape but with nothing else in mind I started playing with the paint which I had mixed with gel medium to give it more body. Somehow this turned into an abstract seascape, hence the use of the blue. I used thick paint on the palette knife and mixed the greys on the painting. I was quite pleased with this way this little exercise turned out and painted two more, which I will post in a later painting.