Blue Cumulus

oil on card 36x18 cm

Music first. Facing the blank surface on the easel, for some reason I put on Brian Eno's 'Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtrack', and the first track – 'Under Stars' - seemed to suit the mood.

It's another cloud from a train, in the 2:1 ratio again – which I'm finding very interesting. The main cumulus and landscape is virtually a transcription of the photo, but some cloud masses have been edited out so as to have a band of clear sky, and I've exaggerated the blueness of the the 'aerie' elements. It didn't go all that well though; at one point I wiped off a whole day's bad painting – bad because I wasn't really concentrating on what I was doing. Anyway, it's done now.

The clouds were definitely resisting - though I think the landscape went OK – but there were several necessary interruptions to the routine at home. My computer had started cutting out with no warning - luckily I didn't lose any work – so I really had to get a new one organised. Finding my way around a new Windows system, working out exactly where all my old files were, reinstalling programmes, then setting everything up so I could work on it, all took a bit of time. A vexing, but necessary process, and hopefully I won't have to repeat it for some time.

A bit of Technical stuff now. I used Winsor and Newton's 'Transparent White' for most of the whites in this, as a try-out. I'd bought a tube recently and had painted comparison samples of all the whites I have onto some black plastic card. This Transparent White actually appeared blue when the paint was thinned out against the black – which the Zinc White didn't - so I thought I'd give it a whirl. I also tried out Michael Harding's 'King's Blue Deep' for the blue sky. It's a mix of Ultramarine, and Titanium and Zinc Whites, but it's very intense and I can see me using it again. 

Best bits of painting? They would be the hill on the horizon to the right, and the murk underneath the main cumulus.

The music linked to (above) was the soundtrack to a film I saw decades ago on my old black and white telly. It was a 1989 documentary by Al Reinart - 'For all Mankind'. The Amazon info text explains it best -

“During the Apollo lunar missions from 1968 to 1972, those on-board were given 16mm cameras and told to film anything and everything they could, in space, in orbit, and on the surface of the moon itself. Two decades later, film-maker Al Reinert went into the NASA vaults to create this extraordinary compendium of their journeys and experiences.”

It can be yours for less than a tenner, and my copy's in the post as I write. Eno's soundtrack is available separately, but some of the tracks can be heard via Youtube (at time of posting). One in particular - 'An Ending (Ascent)' - has been used a lot for BBC and other productions, and is definitely worth a listen.

There we go then. On to the next one...