Winter in the Harbour by Anita Langham

That's wonderfully atmospheric. May I enquire what media you used for your sketches - I'm mostly curious about recording colour in the field. Or on the clifftop, I suppose.

I'd settle for one painting a month at the moment: produced quite a few in January, almost nothing in Feb... and I think it's the weather and the dark that's been stopping me; that and the passage of years.... So if I say keep painting to you, I might even take my own advice and get on with it.... I too would be interested to know the media you use. Although the tones in this are quite close to one another, you still have impact - and that isn't easy to achieve.

Hi, Thanks for the comment. About colour - I mostly note down colours in words on my sketches, and then I might 'reconstruct' the colours when I get back, as a reminder. I like to use a limited palette when I paint, so I tend to focus on two or three key colours, and build the painting around them. For colour studies in the field, I tend to use watercolour paints and/or watercolour crayons and pencils ( I really like drawing, so I find the pencils and crayons really appealing). Have you tried any of those?

Hi, Robert, thanks for your comments. I gave myself this challenge, and made it public by blogging about it, because the painting wasn't really happening for me. It has proved a big incentive - I don't want to fail publicly, so I make sure I do it, and I've also received lots of encouragement (the blog is onepaintingaweek.wordpress.com, if you want to take a look). Not sure what kind of painting you do, but I've found it really helpful, with this challenge, to limit my choices, ie. I work in a set format and size, set materials, and set subject matter. That way, I know what I'm going to be doing. Seems to help me get started. The close tones are probably the limited palette thing - I think I only used three or four basic colours here.