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Isle of Harris | Scottish Landscape Art - Scottish Landscape Paintings

Posts Tagged ‘Isle of Harris’

‘Heavy down pour, Harris, May 2013’

291 'Heavy down pour, Harris, May 2013', Acrylic & Pastel,2013, 30 x 30 cm

 ‘Heavy down pour, Harris, May 2013’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2013, 30 x 30 cm

I’ve had a lot of folk admiring this painting since I did it and so although I’ve shown this as the “Artwork of the Week” before, I thought I’d give it another airing.  I happen to like this piece a lot myself as it reminds me of our fabulous, if very wet two weeks on the Isle of Harris a couple of years ago.  We’re heading back up to Assynt again this year but we’ll definitely be back over to Harris before long…..it’s an amazing place.  Hopefully next time we go, we’ll get some slightly less inclement weather and we’ll get to the top of some of these magnificent wild mountains.

High quality reproductions are available of this painting.

‘Snow, rock and water, Harris, May’

304 ' Snow, rock and water, Harris, May', Graphite on paper, 2013, 70 x 70 cm

‘Snow, rock and water, Harris, May’

 

‘Snow, rock and water, Harris, May’, Graphite on paper, 2013, 70 x 70 cm

I did this graphite drawing last year after our visit to the Isle of Harris. As the title of the drawing implies, the weather during our stay on the island was somewhat inclement…..mainly rain and gales, topped up with snow one day and some sun. It certainly made the streams very active and the idea for this drawing came after watching a stream full of melt water, tumble over a rocky outcrop. The patterns of the white water against the rock looked very similar to the patches of melting snow on the hills behind. I really liked this scene but hope that we’ll have a little less of the wet stuff when we head up to Assynt later in the month!

‘Heavy downpour, Harris, May 2013’

3 'Heavy down pour, Harris, May 2013', Acrylic & Pastel,2013, 30 x 30 cm

‘Heavy downpour, Harris, May 2013’

 

‘Heavy downpour, Harris, May 2013’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2013, 30 x 30 cm,

Price: £485

This is the painting on the poster for my forthcoming exhibition at Blairmore Gallery near Dunoon.

Based on one of the many very wet days we experienced while staying on the Isle of Harris earlier this year, it certainly brings back memories of walking through the very rugged and wet mountain landscape on the island.

This small painting will be one of 17 works included in the exhibition at Blairmore Gallery.  The exhibition runs, Tuesday 27th August – Saturday 5th October 2013.  For further details about the gallery and to view the full exhibition, follow the link to their website at the side of this page.

‘Crossing to Harris, a damp April evening’

296-crossing-to-harris-a-damp-april-evening-acrylic-pastel-2013-76-x-23-cm-jpg

‘Crossing to Harris, a damp April evening’

‘Crossing to Harris, a damp April evening’, Acrylic & Pastel, 2013, 76 x 23 cm

I’ve just finished this painting and it’s the first time I’ve tried to paint a scene based on the sea.  As you’ll probably remember, we travelled over to the Isle of Harris earlier this year for a couple of weeks of walking and relaxing.  We caught the evening ferry from Uig on the Isle of Skye and sat watching the grey waters go by while looking through the mist and spray for the isles to appear.  I’ve already completed a couple of large graphite drawings based on this scene but wanted to try and capture something of it in paint.

I’m planning on taking this piece to the framer on Monday and may well give it an airing in my forth coming exhibition at Blairmore Gallery near Dunoon ….opens Tuesday 27th August and runs until Saturday 5th October.  More information about this exhibition shortly.

Next step

 ' A January morning, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran'

‘ A January morning, Glen Rosa, Isle of Arran’

As any of you who visit my Face Book page will know, I’ve been doing some more drawing this last week.  The drawing, to be titled, ‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’ is small than the last few pieces and is square as opposed to rectangular.  I wanted it to be similar in size to the 80 x 80 cm paintings I do and so cut the paper to this size.  As you know though, I do like my drawings to have a rough edge and so the actual image size on the paper is 70 x 70 cm, ….give or take few millimetres, leaving a white border all around..

When we were over on Harris last month we had, to our surprise, one day of heavy sleet and snow.  The following day we did a great little walk through a glen between the hills.  The snow was really quite low on the hillsides …less the 100 m and after a few kilometres the path reached a bealach at about 130m.  Even at this height there were several centimetres of snow on the ground and everything looked quite wild and wintry.   By this time though, it was thawing and the streams were really full, cascading down their rocky beds in a mass of white water and it struck me how similar it looked to the patterns made by the snow lying on the rocky hillsides above.  We spent a long time wondering and looking and I decided that I’d have to do some drawings based on this scene and idea.  ‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’ is my first attempt and I’m already working on a second piece that will be more abstract, more about the patterns of marks.

'Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013'

‘Rock, snow and water, Harris, May 2013’

Anyway, this first piece is finished I think and I’ve decided that it might be fun to enter it for the forth-coming North Ayrshire Open Art Exhibition.  As you can enter up to two pieces, I’ve decided that I might as well enter one of the other recent graphite drawings too.  Of course, the next step is to decide quite how to have them framed.  I normally use a distressed ‘York’ silver frame with a simple mount behind glass, for my smaller paintings and I had at first thought I do with this.  However, I wasn’t sure whether the silver would work with these quite stark graphite images and so went to my framer at the Waverley Gallery in Prestwick seeking some advice and ideas.

I’ve always found selecting a frame very difficult and so to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to this part of the business.  Amazingly though, Tim had the perfect solution …a very simple charcoal coloured frame.  The moment he put it down against the drawing I knew this was the one and although we tried several other options we came back to this first choice.  To retain the ‘rough’ edge of the drawing, there will be no mount, just the glass sitting directly onto the paper.  I’m quite excited and am looking forward to seeing the pieces framed in this way especially as the second piece I’ve chosen is one of the large Glen Rosa drawings.

Well then, that’s about it for this week.  Nita and I are finally starting to get over the nasty bug we’ve had although my voice is still very rough.  Needless to say there have been a few jokes down at the studios about my needing to take up singing the blues instead of painting!  Of course though, we haven’t been out walking for over three weeks now and have been missing all the fine weather which has been most annoying and now that we’re starting to plan our next outing ….the rain is back on!  Hopefully by next week we’ll have made it out onto a hill and my next blog can include a few nice photos of the Scottish Highlands.

A great trip to Harris

Towards An Cliseam

Towards An Cliseam

Well, as most of you will know, we’ve just returned from a two week stay on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.  Last May when we stayed up on the north coast of Sutherland, we managed to get a good Internet connection by driving up to a high point just outside the village of Betty Hill.  We had hoped that this year we’d be able to find a similar spot on Harris and I could keep up with the regular Face Book updates and at least one blog.  The fact that this is the first time I’ve written anything since 26 April, will tell you that our hopes were in vain.  We did make an effort and on the first day of our holiday we drove around checking out all the high points on the local roads ….but nothing.  We even drove up to Stornoway to buy a different Internet dongle ….but this was only slightly better.  We did get brief spells where there was a signal …but not long enough to actually use!  So then ….a brief update is probably now called for.

Rough ground - the hills of Harris

Rough ground – the hills of Harris

Neither of us had ever been to Harris before but I’d long hoped to do the trip as I’d read great reports of the hill-walking there.  We’d booked a small cottage in the village of Tarbert and as it turned out it was just two minutes from the ferry terminal, so we could see sea from one of the upstairs windows and the low hills rose up steeply behind the village.  Just to the west of the village the sea once again encroaches and a ten minute drive on the main road opens up spectacular views of the rugged Harris hills.  They really are quite dramatic despite being relatively low.  That said they are very rugged and there is a huge amount of rock everywhere.  The highest point on Harris and the whole of the Outer Hebrides is An Cliseam, a steep sided hill rising to 799 m.  Before getting to the island, I’d hoped that we might get to the top of this hill but with the weather doing its best ….much rain, wind and even snow on one day ….we didn’t even get around to attempting it!   That said, we did have four relatively fine days and managed several good walks with spectacular views.  You really don’t have to get very high on these islands to get huge views and even the numerous small hills of around 300 – 400 m give some rough and exhilarating walking.

Looking south from one of the low hills on Harris

Looking south from one of the low hills on Harris

The coastline is spectacular and on the west side of the island there are some incredible beaches of pale sand.  We did a drive down the west coast on the first Wednesday of the holiday.  The forecast had been poor but it turned out to be an almost clear blue sky making these incredible beaches look like something from the Caribbean …..only the strong and very cold wind told you different!  The following day it started raining at about nine o’clock in the morning and continued for thirteen and a half hours, turning to sleet in Tarbert around lunchtime.  By late afternoon we watched as the local snow plough returned to the village, (with snow caked on the front of it) having been called in action to help clear the main road over the hills to Stornoway.  When we went out the following day we found the snow down to below 100 m and the hills looked spectacular.  What a difference 48 hours makes ….one day walking on a beach in bright sunshine ….two days later walking in several centimetres of slippery snow.  This really is one of the reasons I love having a holiday in NW Scotland in May ….you never quite know what you’re going to get …a bit of winter or a bit of summer.

On one of the numerous granite slabs - photo by Nita

On one of the numerous granite slabs – photo by Nita

I had planned to get some work done this holiday but as usual the drawing stuff stayed in the bag.  I have though come away with some good ideas for new work and in fact I’ve already started one new large drawing.  As we approached the Isle of Harris on the ferry it was gloomy and wet with a slightly choppy sea.  We’d sat in the café by a window looking west and with the rain on and the spray hitting the window ….the view looked very much like one of my paintings or drawings.  This first piece of work since I returned is based on my memories of this slowly changing view.  It’s not finished yet but I’ll get some photos of it posted soon.

Suffice to say, we had a great time and it is a place well worth visiting ….we’ll certainly be going back again another year …it’s a real gem and thoroughly recommended.

Towards the main group of hills on Harris - Photo by Nita

Towards the main group of hills on Harris – Photo by Nita

Waves breaking on a Harris beach - Photo by Nita

Waves breaking on a Harris beach – Photo by Nita

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