Inspired to scrape

As the Irish JMW Turners leave town I have a go at scratching out the highlights.

It is the final day of the Turner exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery today and this year there was a swap with the Dublin gallery so our Turners went over there and there ones many of which have never been seen in Scotland, came here for the month of January.

It was so inspiring to see more of Turners work. Stunning sunsets and sun rises, mighty mountains and also such intricate detail work which I hadn’t seen by him before. I loved it and was inspired reading that quite a few of his pieces were created with graphite and watercolour and by scraping off paint with a sharp edge.

Inspired I gave it a go and left out my darker fine ink pens using the softer graphite and then watercolour washes before scraping back the paper to reveal highlights on the skyline in this sketch of Inverleith pond in Edinburgh. I even used a sponge on the sky. It got a bit messy but now I have finished I like it.

I need plenty of practice and maybe a sharper scalpel but I love the creativity and experimentation. Switching from graphite to paint and then the scalpel and back again was great fun. I now have both scalpel and graphite pencil in my sketching kit.

The glorious sunrise which inspired the painting and the tools I used