Sunday 22 August 2010

Sketches from Paderborn

Greetings all!

I have been busy working on several new painting projects but thought I would upload the last of the sketches I did in Germany that are worth looking at in this stage.


A drawing of the Cathedral in Paderborn drawn from a park on the lower side. The whole town of Paderborn was revolved around the cathedral (at least in some aspects). The cathedral is the resting place of the relics of St Liborious who draws massive pilgrimages once a year when they are removed from the crypts for public display. It was very interesting looking in the cathedral which was very badly destroyed during the second World War. You could not tell it was refurbished, apart from the stained glass a lot of which was designed by modern artists. In this sketch I wanted to capture the cathedral from a lower angle which got in the Palace of Charlemagne in the mid-ground and the park in the foreground.


When in Paderborn we were staying in the glass workshop of the company Glasmalerei Peters. Peters is a well established and worldwide glass company that produces modern glass project from various buildings, from embassies to renovated churches. They also restore glass. They were very welcoming to us and we enjoyed staying in this building which was full of mad glass everywhere. I wanted to sketch this to capture the original building with the modern glass attachment.


This sketch is of the medieval city wall of Paderborn. I liked the way it was incorporated into the modern world, history peeking out of the cracks in the city.

Sunday 1 August 2010

Arsenic Mines

Here's some pictures of a large scale painting I am working on. It's of Tin Mines in Cornwall and is based on the strange structures left behind on the landscape after the centuries of mining in the area.

The remains of what were arsenic mines and processing buildings were dotted all over the landscape close to Lands End. Cornwall was once the world's biggest producer of arsenic, besides copper and tin. See http://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/story/earlymod.htm for more info if you are interested. Now all that is left are strange structures rising out of the orange soil like standing stones. The landscape is bleak but beautiful with a strange mix of windswept cliffs and half buried mines dotting the cliff edges. The soil too has a weird colour, the heavy metals present prohibit any type of farming.



In this painting I am working on it in oils, ink and gouache. I intend to have it finished in the next week or so ready for exhibiting and will buy a few more canvas/board of a similar size to do a few more. The subject matter fascinates me, a 'wild' landscape that when viewed closer reveals centuries of heavy industrial activity.


A close up of the concrete pillars. The weathering effect of the Atlantic Ocean made these very beautiful and aged. More detail to come..
www.andrew-smith-artist.co.uk/