Commission: Helen Betley’s Windermere swim, with a lot of gold leaf

Thought you might like to see a painting I finished before Christmas. Last year, Helen Betley swam the length of Windermere… butterfly! Her husband asked if I could paint a painting of the swim. I don’t generally do landscape paintings, (as actual paintings, rather than digital drawings) but I do do a lot of figure drawings, and gold leaf, so I suggested this combination as a bold composition, rather than a straight painting of someone swimming. All the leaf is gold, the different colours are different alloys of gold, and it’s all applied piece by piece, with a paintbrush as it’s too delicate to pick up. The rest is pencil and a watercolour wash, and the little folly is really there on the shore of Windermere, but I added the inscription in my drawing, as a detail to commemorate the swim.

All the photographs are of the same painting – the gold leaf changes so much with different light you may think there is more than one version.

Finished painting – photo 1

Finished painting – photo 2

One of the photos I worked from

Photo elements re-arranged

Sketch for painting

Detail of painting – Helen with hat details

Detail of painting – Helen

Detail of painting – The Folly, with swim details

Finished painting – photo 3

Finished painting – photo 4

An Unseasonal Bude

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I’m not sure how it happened but this picture never made it onto my blog. It’s been on my Facebook page, because I donated it to the Friends of Bude Sea Pool to sell as prints (and also perhaps cards, t-shirts or whatever they want to use it for)… but somehow in the excitement it missed the blog.

If you’d like a print, which are lovely gallery-quality prints like my others, it is available from the Friends of Bude Sea Pool website: https://www.budeseapool.org/shop/ and available from the shop in the Summerleaze Car Park. Prints: £25, £35, £60 for print alone, mounted, or framed respectively.

So if you are longing for a glimpse of summer, this is the print for you!

Bude Sea Pool in the Summer – Digital drawing by Nancy Farmer

….the text is from this year’s calendar:

“Bude Sea Pool”
With the temperature in the high twenties and no air con in the car, Lucy and I drive down to Bude to visit the Sea Pool there. It’s a year in which we actually seem to be having Summer, and of course it’s too hot, because this is England, we are not used to this sort of weather and we weren’t expecting it.
Now we can watch the antics and faffing of the great British Public, who haven’t had the opportunity to practice their waterside faffing skills since last summer. Some jump straight in it’s so hot. But we are pros at this: there is much talking, there are local swimmers to meet, there is the history of the rescuing of Bude Sea Pool from threatened demolition: it takes us nearly an hour to get into the water. It’s so, so lovely once you’re in!

Welcome to the Silly Season

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In truth the Silly Season has been going on since about December if you are a cold water swimmer. If you are not, you may well have considered it to be silly to swim outside since September, if not earlier. The actual swimming, however, is not the silly part. Welcome to the season of Winter Events, where wetsuits are often banned, but chicken costumes considered perfectly appropriate attire.
This is the Polar Bear Plunge! 2019, at Bude Sea Pool

Polar Bear Plunge! 2019 at Bude Sea Pool

(note: this is all one pic – since they updated the software and I updated the hardware I seem to have a load more pixels to play with, so I thought you might like to see some close-ups since I spent ages putting all this in….)

Close-up detail – the chickens and the tiger

Close-up detail – medals for everyone!

Close-up detail – Lucy, Neptune and the unimpressed dog.

How to get into a River

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“How to get into a River” – digital drawing by Nancy Farmer

*sploosh*
“oops… drops off suddenly here!”

…repeat until everyone is merrily splashing about in the river. In January. As you do.
And, before someone points it out: the trick of course is not in the getting in but in the making sure you have done so at a point where you can also get out again, because it would be a shame to miss the cake…

On Sunday the South West Seals swam with the Wiltshire Wild Swimmers at Tellisford Weir. I have somehow omitted the weir so there may be another drawing if I can find the time. Thank you Wiltshire Swimmers, it was a fabulous away day for the SW Seals and you are very welcome for a re-match on our home ground. Speaking personally: a gentle 10 minutes of swimming was followed by about 6 pieces of cake. We may need to get into some serious training for the re-match!
(I should add that they also cooked hot dogs on a fire, I’m just more a cake person and there’s only so much a girl can eat: one of everything was not physically possible…)

Row Clarke is centre stage here: her fabulous Deakin & Blue cossie teamed with an equally fabulous retro flowery swimming cap.

Prizewinners’ Exhibition at Ilminster Arts Centre 2nd – 19th Jan 2019

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Some months back I entered a couple of paintings into Ilminster Arts Centre’s Open Exhibition, and was delighted to win the exhibition first prize. So I’m now also pleased also to be able to tell you that several of my swimmer paintings are back in the Arts Centre now – they are part of the Prizewinners Exhibition – an exhibition of work from the several artists who won prizes at the Open Exhibition. And it so happens that Ilminster Arts Centre is my favourite place to have an exhibition in anyway – it’s a large airy hall, with a cafe and excellent cake at one end of the gallery. All run by very lovely people, and a lot of them volunteers. Pop in if you are nearby – here are the details:

Prizewinners’ Exhibition: 2nd – 19th January
At: Ilminster Arts Centre at the Meeting House, East Street, Ilminster, Somerset, TA19 0AN
Gallery Open: Mon-Fri 9.30am-4.30pm; Sat 9.30am-2.30pm.
Admission Free.
Please note the exhibition will close at 12noon on Sat 19 January

Ilminster Arts Centre poster

Learning to Sail – a commission

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A commission I finished a while ago – this is Jeremy Storr’s father learning to sail. He was the only one in the class, so he had all his lessons in the boat! I wanted to show his face – I had a photo where he had a lovely smile – but I thought it would be a shame if you didn’t see the whole boat, so he and his instructor are in the foreground, and at the same time sailing past in the background. Art is useful like that…

Digital drawing – “Learning to Sail”

Winter Sun

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As the lake temperature plummets, it seems appropriate that I am adding this painting to the blog. This is one I finished a couple of months ago, back when a brisk swim in 3 degrees was a distant thing, but this is Row Clarke getting out of Clevedon Marine Lake last January, and it was indeed that cold, but gloriously sunny.

Everything that is not water is painted in watercolour (ironically) in a mix of pigments that looks like black but in fact is a transparent magenta, yellow and blue, which is more interesting for being not quite black and having subtle shades in it, and nicer to paint with. And all the water is done in a mix of aluminium, gold and palladium leaf. The first photo is taken with very flat lighting that shows the painting at its best overall, but a couple of images below this are snaps I took in different lighting, which show the effect of the metal leaf and the way the picture changes when half of it is metallic and half not.

Winter Sun - watercolour and metal leaf by Nancy Farmer

Winter Sun – Row emerging from Clevedon Marine Lake – watercolour and metal leaf by Nancy Farmer

Water done in metal leaf

Metal leaf – same picture, different lighting

source photo for Winter Sun

WaterDrawn

Art & Design by Nancy Farmer, all of a watery nature

Commission: Helen Betley’s Windermere swim, with a lot of gold leaf

An Unseasonal Bude

Welcome to the Silly Season

How to get into a River

Prizewinners’ Exhibition at Ilminster Arts Centre 2nd – 19th Jan 2019

Learning to Sail – a commission

Winter Sun