January visit to Markshall
Yesterday I got started on my Twelve Months on an Essex Country Estate painting project. I made my first visit to Markshall!
The first thing I did was to take out a Friends membership. For £49.00 I can make as many visits as I like for the year, which I thought was very good value. I also now have a Friends car park ticket, so that I have access to the woodland when the arboretum and gardens are closed – for example on Sundays and Mondays.
It was a warmer morning than we have had recently, but still only 5 degrees, so not very conducive to sitting still for very long. I had a good walk round the lake, through the walled garden – not much to show there at the moment, of course – and through some of the arboretum.
Two buzzards were circling for some time over the trees at the end of the lake. There were mallards and moorhens on the river running below the white bridge. The huge carp, which we fed when I was there before Christmas, were all gathered by the weir. Large parts of the lake were still frozen, but the moving water by the weir had prevented freezing in that area.
There isn’t a lot of bright colour around in January, but the dogwoods were vivid in reds and ochre yellows, and the witch-hazels were all covered in their crinkled yellow flowers.
I did a small drawing of the farthest corner of the lake, which is going to be the subject of my painting this month. It was very chilly sitting still!
I thought it was going to be difficult to find any Pickings – but once I’d got into the arboretum I was spoiled for choice. I picked up twigs with larch cones attached, an oak twig with shiny leaf buds, a small section of branch covered with lacy pale blue-green-grey lichen, a small woodpigeons feather and an oak leaf. Here they are, in the tin which I take to put things in to prevent them getting crushed.
Later today I will be drawing some of them with Pitt pastel pencils onto January’s deep blue pastel paper which I showed you in my last post.
Getting ready
I have been assembling some new art materials, ready to make a start on my new painting project. I’m intending to make my first visit to Markshall this week, provided the weather warms up a bit – it was -5 degrees C this morning!
You may remember from my last post that I’m going to be drawing some Pickings – items such as twigs, leaves, fir cones, feathers – which I can pick up from around the grounds. I am going to use Pitt pastel pencils, as I did for the beachcombings that I drew in my Mersea Island project. I have a large range of different colours in these pencils already. I used Daler Rowney pastel paper then, and I’m going to use it again for the drawings in this project.
I bought three pads of pastel paper – Neutral, Warm and Cool. They each had six different shades in the pad.
I wanted to choose shades for the drawings that would not only suit the months, but would also work when I use the drawings for a new tea-towel design, and for a new set of coasters. I initially chose twelve different colours.
I quickly realised that these just looked ‘bitty’ and didn’t sit well together at all! I had a think about the tea-towel design, and realised that the first six colours needed to be repeated in reverse for the bottom six. I also bore in mind that many customers had commented that they liked my newest tea-towel – Essex Fields, in my shop here – better than my Mersea Findings one, because the colours were brighter. They didn’t like the neutral earthy colours as much! So I came up with these as my choice.
January and December – blue
February and November – dark green
March and October – bright green
April and September – orange
May and August – red
June and July – dark cerise
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I also thought about the Flowerings paintings that I will be doing each month. Some of these will be gouache – I think! – but some will be soft pastel. I have quite a big range of Unison Soft Pastels now, but not a huge number of vibrant flower colours. While Jacksons Art had a pastel sale on I thought it was worthwhile buying the Unison Colour Botanical box. Look at the wonderful colours!
I am really looking forward to making a start now on Twelve Months on an Essex Country Estate. My first visit could be as soon as Tuesday – and I will share some photos once I’ve been.
Happy New Year!
Happy New Year 2025!
Hello, I’m back! After not using my blog for the last 18 months, this year I shall be using it regularly – probably once a week – to document my new Twelve Months painting project.
If you’ve followed my work for long you will remember that I have previously completed three Twelve Months painting projects. In 2016 I did Twelve Months in an Essex Wood; in 2020 Twelve Months in an Essex Field; and in 2022 Twelve Months on an Essex Island.
This year I am going to be working on Twelve Months on an Essex Country Estate. The estate in question is Markshall near Coggeshall in North East Essex, just a few miles west of Colchester. The Hall itself was demolished in the 1960s, but the estate that remains has a large walled formal garden, a huge lake, an arboretum, and acres of natural woodland.
I went for a ‘recce’ visit with some friends before Christmas and I was more than convinced that there is plenty to keep me busy for the year. Here are a few of the photos I took that day, to give you an idea of the place.
The lake is full of huge carp which we were able to feed – free fish food is given out in the ticket office! – and we had a lovely time wandering around the lake, the arboretum and the edge of the woodland areas. As my friends had their dog with them we were not allowed in the formal garden, but I have been in there on previous visits, so I know how lovely it is sloping down to the shore of the lake, with beautiful old brick walls and gateways.
My plan for the year goes like this – this is what I aim to achieve by December.
- 12 acrylic paintings 40cm square, of different parts of the garden, one from each month
- 12 pastel pencil drawings about 24cm square of ‘Pickings’ from the estate, one from each month. If you remember my ‘Snippings’ drawings from the Essex Field, and ‘Findings’ drawings from the beach on the Essex Island. Obviously I can’t ‘pick’ from plants, but I am really meaning ‘pick up’ – so think leaves, twigs, feathers, fir-cones, etc. Anything which will present an opportunity to draw natural objects in detail.
- 12 small ‘Flowering’ paintings, in either soft pastel, or gouache of individual flowering plants, one from each month. I will choose something in the gardens, and either work en plein air, or draw and take photos to paint back in the studio.
- I will make notes each month of everything I notice, that I see or hear, changes in the gardens, in the trees, birds, insects and other wildlife.
- I will experiment using a Gelli printing plate to make mono prints of the gardens or individual plants.
At the end of the year, as well as all the original paintings, I will have the material to make a fourth Twelve Months book, to make two new sets of coasters, two new tea towels, and a calendar for 2027.
That’s the plan!
I am excited to get started in a couple of weeks, and have already started gathering art materials that I will need. I am also going to be researching the interesting history of Markshall – or Marks Hall as it was previously know. I already know that it has two interesting links with my own family, one through my father, and one long ago in the 1600s!
I plan on giving you an update here, every week, so check back regularly if you are interested to see what I’ve been up to!