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:

Church, Esquel

Not following a strict geographical progression here, but until I photograph the paintings I've done of further south in Patagonia, here is one I did of an attractive church in Esquel, which certainly had a bit of a "wild west" feel about it, being all facade and tin roof and brick behind. It sits opposite the station for the Old Patagonian Express, made famous in Paul Theroux's book. The church had quite an unusual facade, with numerous angles. Esquel has some welsh influence, and nearby are several villages with Welsh names.
Arches rough, 300gsm, 30" x 22"

Patagonia- Puerto Natales

A temporary halt to the South Georgia paintings- I've got a few more in the pipeline but haven't had a chance to work on the ideas recently, so thought I would post some of the Patagonia paintings and sketches I've done.
First one is a painting based on a sketch I did of the shore at Puerto Natales. A windy day (as is the norm here) but warm and sunny, with characteristic lenticular clouds formed over the mountains.

Elephant seals, ocean harbour

A different view of Ocean Harbour,this time, looking over the gray sand spit. I'm not entirely happy with the elephant seal representation, but it is the first attempt at a group of them so I will persevere with this; it's hard to get a view on South Georgia without a group of them in the foreground.

Glacier, king Haakon Bay

A Zodiac cruise along the snout of the glacier at the head of King Haakon Bay gave me a chance to sketch the basic forms; it took a bit of experimentation to try to capture the intense blue-greens that appear to emanate from a light source within the glacier itself. a first try, I'm keen to return to this subject and play around a bit more with the colours. This was a fairly clean glacier, but others have various bands of earth colours running through them. I'm not sure of the origin of these bands, any glaciologist reading this is welcome to provide an explanation.
On arches 300gsm rough paper again, 22x15"