Winter weather, daylight and gathering resources

It’s usually at this time of year, when the days start to feel a lot shorter, that my mind turns to the thorny issue of time, or not having enough of it to be exact.

I don’t know why it is that time seems to be so much shorter in the winter; after all there are the same number of hours in every day, all year round. I suppose it’s because, as artists, we depend so much on the daylight for our work. In the autumn several years ago I bought a large daylight lamp in the hope it would extend the hours I could paint in my studio, and it does help, but nothing seems to be able to replace natural daylight completely.

This is also the time of year when I make my last field trips to gather resources I’m going to need for paintings to be made during the worst of the winter. Right now I’m keeping an eagle eye on the weather, hoping for an extra few bright, dry days, when I can get out there and fill my sketch book with enough material to keep me busy once the weather has really closed in.

It’s not that I live in the most northern part of the country, but rather that I do much prefer to gather my painting resources during the sunnier, warmer days of the year, whenever that’s possible. This is when there are lots of other people outside too, going about their business and doing what they do. My paintings almost always contain lots of people, and I like to sketch these people from real life, although I do change the way they look so they’re not too recognisable.

To me, including people in a painting brings it to life, without any people in the scene the painting can appear quite post-apocalyptic!

So dry, bright days mean lots more people to sketch, and I’ll have warmer fingers to sketch with too!