Thursday, March 29, 2018

Ragged Cumulus – August 2017

oil on card 36x18cm

A view of West Lothian out of the train window, from last summer. The weather was quite changeable and it was an interesting cloud day, so I daresay there’ll be another sky piece from that day’s trip at some point.

The final source was straight from a photo, but my original ‘vision’ had a lot more sky and land. I was interested in the clouds, obviously, but was also drawn to the late summer contrast of dark August foliage and pale yellow fields. There was a visual rhyme linking the ragged cumulus updraughts and windblown fir trees on the skyline, and to make this plain I had to zoom well into the original image. I had a rethink just before applying paint and zoomed in even further, cutting out a lot of sky and foreground. Not long in, I realised that this reframe made the ground distances uncomfortably compressed, so I abandoned the ‘ragged rhyme’ idea, and shifted the higher ground back half a mile - smoothing the skyline and giving the cloud forms some space.

Technical stuff? Nothing really, except that for the final lights in the clouds I used Michael Harding’s Warm White Lead Alternative – a slightly warmer white (the label on the tube is a bit of giveaway) - with added Walnut Oil. In my enthusiasm for Stand Oil, I sometimes overlook the smoothness and mobility of Walnut – it was very effective for soft effects on clouds before, and it still is. 

This little piece took far too long to paint. I was too hesitant in the initial stages, and then had to wipe off an annoying large tree in the lower right corner – accidentally providing the far cloudbank - then did all that re-working of the hill. Worth it though.

However, it was interesting using the wide 2:1 double square proportions. Madam and I had seen an exhibition of Charles-François Daubigny landscapes in the National Gallery of Scotland a couple of years ago, and saw that he often used 2:1 canvasses. Daubigny was painting just before Monet – his paintwork was a lot looser than the established academic painters, and he liked to paint in the open air. To facilitate this he had a boat converted into a floating studio, in which he travelled - and painted - the canals and rivers of Northern France. Monet followed Daubigny’s example both in the further loosening of his paintwork, the Plein Air thing, and indeed building - and painting in - a studio boat, though I don’t think he painted double squares much. Nevertheless, it’s a panoramic ratio and suits expansive landscapes very well.

And you don’t necessarily need a studio boat to use it…