48 Artists&Illustrators
- The Cotswolds
M
any of you will be familiar
with the paintings and
teaching of the late James
Fletcher Watson, and his were among
the first books I bought when learning
to paint in watercolour. His former
home and studio are in the Cotswolds
and I was so pleased to be invited to
teach there during the summer by
his daughter Jo as part of Windrush
Art Courses.
I arrived a day or so early to explore
this beautiful part of England and my
journey took me to Taynton, a typical
Cotswold village nestling in the
Windrush Valley. I didn’t want to
spend too much time in one place,
but I had my sketching kit with me
and there was a convenient bench
right in front of this pretty subject.
I find painters are wary of using
words like “pretty” as it has become
an almost derogatory description
right up there with “chocolate box”
and “twee”. I think that is a pity. After
all, it is the painting that is important,
not the subject. A successful painting
can come from any subject and
prettiness should no more rule out
a subject than ugliness.
In any subject worth painting there
is always something that catches my
eye, and this is often what might be
considered a minor part of the overall
subject. Here it was the wonderful
rickety gate and, although standard
advice would be to paint a gate open
so as not to create a barrier in your
painting, I recklessly ignored that
and painted it closed!
Pen and wash is a very convenient
and expressive sketching medium,
one that is particularly suited to
man-made subjects. These tend toLANDSCAPES IN DETAILRevisiting the
favourite landscapes
of his pre-lockdown
travels, GRAHAME
BOOTH heads to an
Oxfordshire village
to demonstrate pen-
and-wash sketching