Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Scarp

oil on card 32x18cm

Another sky exercise on small card. It’s a view from the Dunblane-Edinburgh train, looking at the low hills across the Forth river plain, just past Bridge of Allan.

It’s really about the sky of course, and most of the effort has gone into that part of the painting. The ground is treated fairly cursorily, but I think it’s still quite effective. It’s actually a fiction – a computer-generated composite. In order to get the wide sky I took three photos and put them together using a panorama stitching programme. The sky was fairly constant over that time, but because the train was belting along at 50/60mph the nearer ground features were entirely different in all three photos. The image produced wasn’t bad though, and a little tweaking brought the composite to something I could work with. Any remaining minor inconsistencies were rationalised out during the painting process.

On the technical side, I used this little piece to try out Michael Harding’s ‘Warm White Lead Alternative’. He recently introduced this in response to requests from painters (not me) to ‘synthesize’ an easily available alternative to Lead Carbonate/Flake White at a reasonable cost. It’s a blend of Titanium and Zinc whites, with a touch of Yellow Ochre, in Linseed oil. He may have added a bit of wax or something as well (purely guessing here), as it feels more like real Flake White than greasy Titanium or lightweight Zinc. It doesn’t dry in the same way though – one of the major attractions of Lead White is that it’s fast and thorough drying – but this ‘Fake Flake’ is pleasant enough, and I’m sure I’ll continue to use it. Having said that I did use Titanium white for the final top lights behind the central cloud. Sometimes you just have to.

The low hills are the magnificently-named Gargunnocks. They’re aligned with the Fintry Hills and Campsie Fells to the southwest, and feature a straight-edged escarpment along their northern edges, tilting gently down towards the south. This fault line continues northeastwards and becomes apparent again along the steep southern edge of the Ochil Hills. However, these tilt towards the north, and I’ve absolutely no idea what’s gone on there as I’m not a geologist, but visually that’s very interesting.

I do actually enjoy painting these little sky pieces. They’re something I can get done quite fast – this one clocked in at 10hrs over five sessions - and I feel I can afford to treat them quite freely and experimentally, which pays off when tackling the larger stuff.

Looking forward to the next one already - the light is strengthening by the day, and it’ll soon be Spring…