Strathearn Sun Study

oil on card 34x26cm

Madam and I spent Xmas day last year at my mother’s, near Crieff, and drove up there first thing in the morning. It was a beautiful clear day, but all along the Earn Valley – Strathearn – there was a bank of mist. The Sun was low, just above the Ochil Hills, and was brilliantly diffused by the mist. A Very Good Subject for a Sun Study.

I tried to utilise the whiteness of the primer by using my oil paint very thin – like watercolour, but it didn’t work as well as I’d hoped and I had to resort to the opaque Titanium white to even out some unwanted roughness in the atmospherics. I quite like the coarse texture of the grass and hedges though – it’s quite efficient, though I say it myself.

Not much more to say really, except that the fog bank hung around all day and was still there on Boxing Day as we came back.

Just wish I’d taken more photos…