When No-One is Looking …

During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020-21 I had quite a bit of spare time on my hands so I decided to try my hand at painting.

I’ve always been reasonably good at illustration work but painting always eluded me. In part, I blame this on the school curriculum in the 1970s when we were expected to work in oil paint. I just couldn’t get the hang of it. It was like painting with lard. But these days we have acrylics, which means quick drying and not having to faff about with turps (mineral oils) or linseed oil and all of that complex brush-washing nonsense.

But what to paint?

I decided to paint some stones.

But not just any stones.

Stone bothering at Carwynnen Quoit, Chûn Quoit, the Mên-an-Tol, and Lanyon Quoit

As a child growing up in Cornwall I was always fascinated by the many Neolithic structures that littered the landscape. There were standing stones, sometimes called menhirs. There were stone circles, barrows and mysterious holed stones. There were also dolmens - known to us Cornish as ‘quoits’. My late father used to tell us that the heavy capstones - all weighing many tons - were floated into place by druid magic. Or maybe, to take an animistic view of reality, the rocks assembled themselves into these shapes just for the fun of it.

That became the inspiration for my first attempts at painting.

Just what do the stones get up to when no-one is looking?

My first four quoits

With each new painting my technique improved. I watched YouTube tutorials and read lots of blogs and visited artists’ websites. I experimented with colour and lighting. I slowly started to get the hang of the texture of granite. I couldn’t actually visit any sites due to lockdown restrictions but, thankfully, I have taken hundreds of photos of these sites over the years so I had plenty of reference.

Some more quoits and a stone circle coming in to land

I learned new things with every painting. And I made a LOT of mistakes. But art is like any other skill - you need to put the hours in. No one ever sat at a piano for the first time and played the Brandenburg Concertos. No-one ever picked up a racquet and walked onto a tennis court for the first time and served a bunch of aces. It’s no different when it comes to paint and canvas. It takes time and practice, practice, practice.

It’s now five years later and I’m still painting (and learning) although not as frquently as I’d like. The lockdowns were troublesome and a financial strain for a freelancer like me. But they did give me that rarest and most precious thing - time.

I’ll end this blogpost with a couple of newer pieces. The Mên-an-Tol was my final ‘floaty stones’ painting (I’ve got the hang of granite now) and I’ve moved on to other subjects.

I wonder what’s next?

Mên-an-Tol and Forest Spirit

All images copyright © 2026 Stevyn Colgan. All rights reserved. Do not copy, repost, or use without express written permission.