Al Aqur Village , Jebel Akhdar
Evenings up here are a time to relish , and however tired you are the sheer inspiration of being in this monumentally spectacular place keeps you entranced by nature in its most dramatic manifestation . Painting watercolours at sunset is prone to messy results , as you have to work fast , while the paint is slow to dry . An unwary brushstroke can cause washes to run into one another where you may not want that to happen . To stay ahead of the game I try to draw in some of the most vital features of the scene before the actual sunset effect begins , otherwise the pencil has to be abandoned and I work directly with paint from the word go . Watercolour pencils greatly enhance the speed with which the washes can be controlled , simply by drawing into the wet washes . Slowly the shapely peaks became redder , the plunging precipices a deeper purple as they gathered that magical atmosphere of mysterious darkness . Rocks �lushed pink and rose-coloured as they caught the last glimmer of warm light in the dying glow . Stark crags took on a more menacing countenance as their detail blended into dark silhouettes against what was left of the light . Then all the light had gone , dark as the menacing gloom of Tartarus , leaving us to blindly grope our way back across the rock-strewn plateau to our base . This is based on a chapter in my book , Arabian Light , to be published by Search Press in May 2022 . It is packed with sketches and watercolours of the Middle East , a result of my many visits there . An exhibition of the paintings from the book will take place at the Osborne Studio Gallery at
2 Motcomb
Street , London SW1X 8JU ( tel . 020 7235 9667 ) from 18 to 28 May .
Further details can be found at www . davidbellamy . co . uk
outdoor focus / summer 2022 13