oil on panel 90x70 cm
When I looked up the date I actually started this painting, I was very surprised to find that it was the first week of February – I thought I'd been working on it a lot longer. In fact, I started composing it last summer, but for various reasons I didn't begin the actual painting till earlier this year. It's seemed to have been a very intense, and very complex painting to do, and it's a relief to see it's done now. I don't know why, but it does now seem to be the case that some time has to elapse between my finishing a painting, and my being able to judge whether it's been a success or not, so I really can't tell just now how it's turned out. I'm still not really sure about the title. I'll know in a few weeks – but here it is.
I wouldn't say that this painting had specific mood-settering, 'zoning-in' music – if I felt particularly lethargic I'd just shuffle a batch 60s, 70s, or 80s pop - but if I wanted a settled, restful atmosphere to work in, I'd probably reach for the Max Richter. His hypnotically minimalist 'Sleep' provided that for many work sessions. Most 'Sleep' youtube extracts are too long and bad quality, but here's a gentle 9-minute live version of one of the themes.
The landscape source is in western Russia, near the village of Belenikhino, and I found it while looking at the Prokhorovka Tank Memorial and the surrounding countryside on Google Streetview. There was a huge tank battle in that area in 1943, but I should stress that the location is not specifically relevant to this painting, and is coincidental.
I liked the arrangement of the masses and open spaces, and the bright, diffuse light. The sky in the source was difficult to work with (though there is a beautiful cumulus round to the left), so I imported a similar one – with just a bit more sparkle and blue - from some photos I took in France some years ago.
I was baffled by the diffuse jumble of fuzzy grasses and shrubs, and at first I simply had no idea how to depict them. To some extent I made forms out of accidental marks because I had a lot of trouble finding the structures in the sources - and used the streetview images on each side of the original for more information about the masses and spaces. Once the figure was settled in, I realised that there needed to be a finer texture and some delicacy around it, so I planted some daisies and grass that I'd sourced for a painting a couple of years ago. It improved the whole painting a lot, I think, both in terms of marks and texture, and as a more sympathetic bed for the figure.
Technically, this is quite an interesting piece. It's on hardboard panel, with white acrylic priming, gridded, and initially set out with light pencil. The forms and tones were developed with fast-drying thin monochrome acrylic paint – effectively an extension of the white priming. For some bizarre reason I used Violet Brown – which I realised was a mistake by the second session, but felt I had to carry on for the colour continuity, though I did switch to Raw Umber for the figure. My first task for the second phase – building up the surfaces with 'true' colour in oil paint – was to start killing off the violet with broad yellowy-green transparent oil washes. Which was annoying.
If the right under-colour is used this could be a very fast method of establishing drawing and tones, since the drawing shows through the thin oil paint. Substance and weight, and corrections where needed, can be built with opaque paint which can itself be glazed over if required. Indeed, where I had to re-stated light-toned forms – e.g. in the foreground plants - they were painted in white, then glazed with transparent pigments with added Stand Oil and Damar varnish. This may seem quite a roundabout method – and the white seems very anomalous and alien before the colour goes on - but the result is quite a rich surface with a very luminous, almost crystalline, effect. (Which may not be evident from the screen image)
Would I paint with this technique again? Yes, absolutely, and it's worth finding out which paints and pigments are transparent, and which are opaque. Done correctly, it should be a huge time-saver, and next time I'll be using something like Payne's Grey or Raw Umber.
The most efficient painting here was in the sky. Most of it was done with very little paint in about one hour (the whites and light tones are the untouched priming and a mere staining coat of paint) and the darker soft greys are a semi-opaque layer stippled on and faded with my new badger blenders, and cloth dabber pads. That would have been the sky done and dusted had I not decided to lower parts of the far tree-line, which meant very careful tone and colour matching when overpainting the unwanted (quite dark) ex-treetops.
The figure, which I've tried to re-direct the viewer away from, was in a photograph I found on the web. I had always known that there would be someone tucked in at the edge of the grass, and I had been about to start the painting when the nagging doubt about my very first figure made me stop, and look for another. I thought my second one, facing away, was again good to go, but at the last moment I felt that I could do better, and again halted, and did yet more picture searches. As soon as this image, a dead Finnish soldier, came up on my screen, I knew that it was exactly what I was looking for. The face was fully visible, and there was a hurt, drawn-in, fragility in the body. I angled him so that his head was lower than his hip, and his shape rhymed more with the bushes, and he was just right. As usual, I found it very difficult to draw or paint a prone figure, so I cheated slightly by turning the source image and the panel 90 degrees, and worked the figure as if upright.
I took a lot of time to get the face right, touching in small developments and corrections, letting my eyes rest, then refining the image over several sessions. It was a painful subject to paint, and I freely admit that the figure is steeped in my mother's death last year - and there is something of her last breath in the lower lip.
As I said above, it's been a very complex painting to do. I'm glad I took the time and didn't hurry it.
That's it done now, and I'll move along, and get on with the next one
