Old shop, Punta Arenas Chile

Punta Arenas is a mix of solid, established buildings that of the sort that would grace any European city, and more ramshackle affairs that lend a real frontier feel to the place. A lot of tin sheets and peeling timber boards make for a wealth of interesting subjects. This is a small pastel sketch of one of these:

Off the coast of South Georgia

A qck pastel sketch this time, of a section of the coast near gold harbour (north east corner of the island, not far from drygalski fjord). I'm finding it quite a challenge to get the subtle snow tones in pastel, but enjoying working with the medium, and I hope to progress to some larger pastel works.

barracks, Grytviken

it's been a long time since I last posted on this blog, but I've been trying out pastels so I thought I would upload a quick sketch I did of the barracks at Grytviken. It's quite an impressive building, sadly in a poor state of repair, but separate from the other buildings and therefore quite easy to isolate in a picture.
Pastels are quite fun, I'm finding, and great for an impressionistic approach. Detail is very difficult to achieve, so I'm forced to concentrate on the bigger shapes. With a very limited range of colours, I'm also having to revert to colour mixing theory to get the subtle greys etc. that are much easier to achieve with watercolour. I would love a comprehensive range of sennelier colours, but I'm afraid they will break the bank, so will have to make do with what I have.

Cuernos del Paine

The Cuernos dominate the view for much of the trek on the classic W circuit in Torres del Paine National Park. The distinctive darker summit rocks make the peaks easily identifiable even when many miles away from the park.
I struggled a bit with this painting getting the tonal values to look right and scrubbed quite a bit of the colour off in the bath, but have got as far as I can with it. Far from one of my best, but I thought I would post it as an interesting subject.

Stromness, the beach

Another painting of the abandoned propellers on the beach at Stromness, this time on Saunders Waterford paper rather than the tinted paper I did the previous painting on, and no body colour this time of course.
I certainly won't be framing this one, but thought I'd upload it for the sake of completeness. I've pretty much reached the end of the South Georgia paintings I'm likely to do; who knows, I might get inspired to revisit some of the old sketches and try to do something new, but in the intervening period since being there and returning home, there has been so many more painting subjects which have grabbed my attention.
I've still got a few Patagonia painting ideas which I hope to do and upload, but in the meantime, here is the half imperial 15x22" picture of Stromness. As always, comments good or bad welcome. Blogger seems to have made it harder recently for people to comment.

Iceberg, South Georgia

A brilliantly sunny day, with an iceberg sitting incongruously off to starboard. I'm not entirely happy with this one, but as with many of my paintings, there are bits of it that I like. 15 x 11":

Torres del Paine

From Puerto Natales, I headed up to Torres del Paine National Park for a few days trekking and sketching .   The scenery is truly incredible, and the weather has been really good given the Patagonian reputation for gales lasting weeks. Instead, I've been treated to blue skies and warm temperatures.
This is the classic view of the Torres del Paine, but it's classic for a reason! Half imperial size.

Torres del Paine

I thought I would upload some of the sketches I did on the spot too. As is often the case, despite the difficult working conditions, I find I prefer the immediacy of sketches done on the spot. This is the one I did of the Torres del Paine on which the painting above is based:

Looking the other way from the viewpoint, there is a significant change in the mountains as the granite disappears and lower, more eroded softer rocks give much less spectacular peaks: