Stephen J Quirke watercolour blog and online gallery
Posted by Stephen Quirke on January 9, 2011 under Art, en plein air, Family, figure, landscape, Muizenberg, painting, seascape, watercolor, watercolour | 
6 Comments to Read
Yesterday we all went out to meet the cousins and Torill at Muizenberg. The waves were small but it was a beautiful day so we sat and chatted and I did this painting.
This is 280 x 380 mm on 185gm Arches Hot Pressed. (loving the hot-pressed).
Posted by Stephen Quirke on December 14, 2010 under Art, Hout Bay, landscape, watercolor, watercolour | 6 Comments to Read
Here comes the second cut. This time I am getting smart and heck of technical!!! I did this last night after sending a proposal off to a client from the other world. I was yawning away but just wanted to get this going. I decided to use a cool blue for the sky – hem hem – Notice how the sky goes back and the sea comes forward. Golly – it really does! And I also used staining pigments like Windsor blue so the sky and the sea are not so grainy – neither here nor there cause I like grainy but there you are. And I made the shadows on the blocks a bit darker AND I put in the cast shadows – so lets see how this develops.
Posted by Stephen Quirke on December 11, 2010 under Art, Hout Bay, landscape, painting, watercolor, watercolour | 16 Comments to Read
OK here we go; the Thumbnail, just to show I do plan, from time to time.
I am busy with the sketch now. Listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn. What a player!!
Posted by Stephen Quirke on November 27, 2010 under Art, en plein air, Kogelbaai, landscape, painting, seascape, watercolor, watercolour | 15 Comments to Read
This afternoon I went down to Kogelbaai to paint with my brother-in-law Tim and my nephew Ben. It was a beautiful afternoon. After wandering around a bit we settled at the bottom of the path off the Caves Beach. I found a nice big square rock and sat in a bunch of grass near the tap. And this is what I did.
Painted on Arches Hot Pressed (man I love that Hot Pressed) 380 x 280 mm.
Posted by Stephen Quirke on under Art, en plein air, landscape, river, watercolor, watercolour | 5 Comments to Read
After painting the nursery watercolour at Green With Envy I drove up to Pietermaritzburg to visit my sister Margie. The sleepy-hollow has grown. But it is still a pleasant town to be in. On Thursday we drove out to Hella Hella on the Umkomaas river, to a guest farm called Highover. Truly this place is a small slice of heaven.
Posted by Stephen Quirke on October 17, 2010 under Art, en plein air, landscape, Route 62, watercolor, watercolour | 2 Comments to Read
Route 62 is a beautiful alternative journey through the Klein Karoo that is becoming more and more popular. Each rise in the road offers stunning vistas and each little town is picturesque. The artists are moving into these towns filling them with the idiosyncratic. Very funky! On the way back from George on Friday we had to pass through Montague and so took route 62. There was not a lot of time for dawdling but we stopped at Smitswinkel (Smit’s shop) 10kms short of Ladismith, for pancakes and apple pie. It was so cool sitting on the stoep watching a few passing cars and the distant rainclouds on the mountains. So I stole 5 minutes to do this painting. I sketched the tree and added it in later.
Posted by Stephen Quirke on October 6, 2010 under Art, en plein air, Hout Bay, landscape, Muizenberg, seascape, watercolour | 4 Comments to Read
On Monday night I did a talk to a group of people in Hout Bay about workshop facilitation. A fun event. Hout Bay is over the other side of the peninsula. Friends invited me to stay over in their guest cottage, to save me the trip back to Somerset West late at night. I thought how great it would be to have some time that side so I took them up on the idea. I painted a watercolour at Hout Bay beach the next morning. Painting on the beach was great and I had a nice chat with a sweet British lady who spends a few months of the year in Cape Town (we call them ‘swallows’). I was also accosted by swarms of vagrants who tried to sell me garish flowers made of glass beads and knotted leather keyrings. Fortunately the tide came in as I painted and the peddlers didn’t want to get their feet wet. Though one guy stood for ages watching me before moving off .
This painting is 260 x 380 mm on 300gm Arches Cold Pressed
Posted by Stephen Quirke on October 1, 2010 under Art, en plein air, Freestate, landscape, Lesotho, painting | 4 Comments to Read
I am sitting at Bloemfontein airport waiting for my flight to Cape Town. I have just done some work for a most delightful client in Lesotho and left Maseru early this morning to avoid the expected congestion at the Maseru bridge border post. For the last few days I have been living in the middle of the most stunning scenery in the Lesotho Highlands but have been so focussed on the work I was doing that I have not been able to paint. Well, I set that record straight on the way back to the airport.
Tenniskop – 190x280mm on 185gm arches cold pressed.
Posted by Stephen Quirke on September 18, 2010 under Art, en plein air, landscape, painting, seascape, watercolor, watercolour, Wilderness | 5 Comments to Read
Last week I went up the Garden Route on a consulting outing and had a short time to catch up on watercolours. The first was yesterday morning in Wilderness where I had a short time at sunrise on the beach below the town before shooting into George for a meeting.
Mmm this is very yellow. The sun came up to the left of the painting as a big red ball in the mist and went behind the dark clouds. There were massive swells rolling from the South and the sea mist hung over the headland at the end of the beach. All too soon it was time to pack and rush off…
I did not not take my watercolour box but had small cut-sheets in my sketchbook. It was interesting going small again. This is 190 x 280mm on 185gm Arches Cold Pressed.
Posted by Stephen Quirke on September 12, 2010 under Art, en plein air, landscape, painting, watercolor, watercolour | 8 Comments to Read
This weekend Aura and I were invited to celebrate the 70th birthday of a great friend of mine at the Leipzig Country House in the Nuy valley near Worcester in the Little Karoo. What a great occasion. The sort of event at which Hercule Poirot would have felt right at home – though fortunately there were no intrigues.
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