Graeme Skinner » castlerigg

Bloomin’ Weather

Graeme — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 10:30:42 +0000

This weekend we had a friend staying with us from Brazil, so we offered to show her around the area, of course the Cumbrian weather did its best to try and dampen our spirits but it failed So here are a few photographs of our whistle stop tour of Cumbria -

As you can see, at the end of the tour the weather was perfect

Painting Stones

Graeme — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 16:35:57 +0000

Today I decided to try a couple of Castlerigg Stone Circle paintings, I want to do an oil painting of the stones but time restraints mean I can only manage to rattle out quick watercolours

Snow time warm ups

Graeme — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:02:40 +0000

I need to crack on with a painting, but as it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve had chance to paint I decided to warm up a little with a quick painting. I decided to paint a new header for my site – just for winter

Of course, since it’s nearly Christmas I had to tweak it a little

Moonlight Magic

Graeme — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:13:45 +0000

Some scenes lend themselves to the moonlight more than others, when I decided to paint a couple of Moon orientated paintings trying to capture the magic of a moonlit Castlerigg Stone Circle was something that sprang to mind almost straight away. Well, to be honest my thoughts went along the lines of – moonlit Shire… moonlit stone circle, having painted the Shire in moonlight it was time to attempt a stone circle. This is a first attempt, I would like to try it again some time in the near future from a slightly different angle and define the stars a bit different (and the shadows).

Old & New

Graeme — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:00:36 +0000

Recently I looked through an old album of mine, when I say old I took the photographs in or around 1984 so it’s old to me. Many of the images are terrible, yet there are odd ones which apart from the technical aspects of the images I could have taken them last week.
It’s strange to think that even at the age of 14 I was pointing the camera more at landscapes than people; it is not a decision I regret, photographing people holds no interest for me whereas I can be lost for hours staring through the viewfinder at a craggy hill or crooked tree. Though I say it’s not a decision I regret, it’s also not a decision I can remember making. You’d imagine there would have been some conscious thought on the issue at some point in my past, but I can’t remember any of it. I do remember taking the photographs, and standing for hours in the darkroom trying to work out what the hell I was doing. It is something we’ve lost with digital, the anticipation felt as you agitated a tank of chemicals wondering what the film would contain.
Comparing photographs taken 25 years apart is not something I’m prone to doing, but it is fun to do every once in a while (well every 25 years or so ).
So, here’s a couple of landscapes from my not so distant past…

I quite like this one, it’s a scratched print of an unnamed craggy hill somewhere in the Lake District, but it shows where my interests were at the time. Then we come to the more modern photographs (many will have already seen these, but they’re my most recent images).

Melbreak