Lake District Landscapes

One day in the late 1960s I was walking on the Coniston fells with  group from the Fell and Rock Club. I was not a member in those days, but they were friendly as always. I remember saying to someone that I would dearly love to paint the fells. I wasn't "good at" drawing or at school Art. But on reaching adulthood I seem to have done more and more painting.

So if you can drop in to The Ambleside Parish Centre on June 21st, 22nd or 23rd you will see what I do.

If I can get out with my easel that is one of my favourite days out.

On this occasion (at the head of Mosedale) there was a layer of heavy cloud at about 2400 feet, which impaired the prospect of the Scafells. Once I got home I added the tops, using a sketch made a couple of years previously.

Better weather helps! here is one of my recent plein aire paintings.

The Buttermere valley was so beautiful on that day in May that I was almost in a trance. There was a cuckoo all the time too. Even though the painting is a fairly accurate representation of the scene it is not a copy. A big tree on the left has been removed, so as to allow Fleetwith Pike to be seen; and the light on the lake and on the beck was changing constantly - not to mention the sky.

My sketching easel is about 40 years old; battered but serviceable. The oldest picture in the exhibition is one I did of Greenburn Beck over twenty years ago. I had walked with my gear from Coniston and was standing on a rock that jutted out. I was less prepared in those days, I recall, for the sun moving and altering the lighting completely.

A more recent piece of kit is a small pochade box. This can be carried in the rucksack further than a leggy easel.

Since I retired I have more time for painting at home, and I am very lucky to have a room in the roof I can use for painting. Most of my paintings now are made at home. This one is Goats Water.

This one is Coniston Old Man, with Levers Water in the foreground. You can see that I sometimes enjoy heightening the colour. But I hope something of the atmosphere of the place is preserved.

I always work from sketches - usually pen these days. I always have a pocket sketch-book; or a larger one if I am on my own and not going to hold up the party. I have nothing at all against painting from photos; I just do not find I can do it. Here are two separate views of the main ridge of the Coniston fells, from sketches made years apart, though the paintings are both recent.

Green is notoriously tricky for landscape painters; but this is what it is like on a fine summer's day when one stops for a sandwich on Great Carrs..

This one is from near the top of Prison Band.

There are a few people whose opinions of my paintings I take very seriously.One is a former pupil, now quite well known in the Edinburgh art world. He commented after my last exhibition that I was too often using small brushes in small paintings. Well, here is a large painting of Harrison Stickle, done almost entirely with rags.

I am astonished to find that this show will have 58 paintings altogether. Despite my friend's exhortation to paint large and free I have also been experimenting with small paintings (unframed so that you can display them as you please). They are all done from sketches. The aim, as always, is to get some of the atmosphere of a place down in paint.

If you can drop in this weekend that will be great. I expect the photos flatter the paintings.

Junior History Exams

Junior History Exams

There is some discussion going on just now about what sort of exams should be set to junior pupils in the years before GCSE.

For what it is worth, this is what we did. Many teachers in other subjects regarded this with deep suspicion, but none of the history teachers did (except that it took a long time to mark).

By “Juniors” I mean the three years before the GCSE course started. In Scotland we call this P7, S1 and S2. Is this Y7, Y8 and Y9 in England?

Part 1: Facts test on the history we had studied during the year.

P7: Tested on a specific list of facts (a double side of A4) given out about 10 days in advance.

S1: A carefully selected set of pages (about 20) in the text book.

S2: Rather more pages in what was a more advanced text-book.

This enabled hard-working pupils to do well – good for self-esteem. Pupils who reckoned they were “less good at history” (whatever that means) could surprise themselves by doing well. Chancers had nowhere to hide. With luck most of them ended the year knowing some bits of history that were worth knowing.

Part 2: Essay

But (and this was the bit some members of other departments could not understand) the titles were given out in advance. In fact, as you will all realise, this meant that no one who could have written a good essay could be caught out by unexpected titles, and no chancer would benefit from an essay on the one topic he knew about a bit. Everyone could (and almost all did) apply the methods of essay writing we had worked on during the year, and work hard at preparing the best essay they could.

The fact that they still had to write it from memory, and against the clock, gave them useful practice in the exam situation.

Part 3. Sources

I can’t now remember exactly what questions we set. But the principle was to set material (on the period we had been studying) that required the minimum of background knowledge beyond the general, and which obliged them to read carefully and to think, before writing their answers.

Part 4: Optional

A pet hate of mine was characters who sat twiddling their thumbs (or being a nuisance) after the exam had finished, so there was some sort of open-ended task that was fun enough to get on with, for those who finished early.

Marking:  No marks, grades or orders

I suppose this was the radical bit. Over the years as Head of Department I had arguments with heads and deputy heads which I sometimes lost for a year or two, but always ended up winning in the end. (My last Headmaster was a history teacher and a lot younger than me, which made it easier).

But every pupil would have an A4 comment sheet, divided into sections (Effort – Writing – I cant remember now – which had to be filled in. You can see why we found the marking harder work than the tick-the-box merchants in other subjects.

Summary

I look back at this and think “Yes. It worked all right”. We may not have gone on to get outstanding GCSE results (we didn’t) but all our juniors, even the ones who took the subject no further, had a petty useful education every exam season.