oil on card 21x15cm
I have four little paintings on the go just now for December's 'On a Small Scale' show at the Open Eye Gallery. The others will be along as they get done.
This is a combination piece. The sky is from a photo I recently took through the front room window, and the hillside is from a set of photos from when we visited Box Hill a few years ago (which turns out to have been quite a productive day - see 2012's 'Madam – Box Hill').
Cloud photos from out of the window are tricky to use as source material – the buildings across the road block out quite a lot of the lower sky. This curling cumulus was too interesting to pass over, so I put my brain in gear and worked out a composition to utilize it. The sunlit hillside covered most of the problem roofs neatly, and some sky and cloud from another photo - taken a few minutes earlier - helped on the right. Bits of original roof and chimney-pot still showing were photoshopped away quickly and easily. It's a fairly conventional composition, if a little lacking in depth. The eagle-eyed might spot that the sunlight in the sky shines from the left, whereas the hillside is illuminated from behind the viewer's right shoulder, but I think it works fine.
This current set of four is taking longer than they should, maybe because I'm being a bit more precise than usual during the initial stages. The measurement and layout are in fine pencil, filled out slightly with weak monochrome acrylic, then the main work is with layers of oil paint. These are, as usual, thinned – mainly with Stand Oil and Damar Varnish. The latter, lighter, stages of the cloud were done with Walnut Oil (not fancy - off the shelf at Waitrose). This is a tremendously fluid medium, very good for wafty soft areas, especially when the surface has been wiped with a Walnut Oil:Turpentine mix (1:2 if you must know), and I'm having a little period of using it again for skies. I have soft fan brushes for manipulating the paint once it's on the surface, using a horizontal, dragging motion - unlike the vertical stippling and 'printing' actions used with Stand Oil. The surface has to be very smooth, as any dried paint flecks, or cat hairs, will show up quite a lot as the paint gathers or is swept off them. As with the Stand Oil, it's a good idea to add a few drops of Driers or Siccatives to the paint before using it; as an ancient Chinese proverb says 'The more oil in yer paint, the longer it'll take to dry. Especially in winter'
The best bits? Surprisingly not the wafty walnut - I'm actually quite chuffed with the birch trunks. Their 'whites' are the primer showing through where I've scratched out the wet paint with a shaped lolly stick.
Inevitably, current events will shoehorn themselves into the creative process, and the image above cannot help but suggest to me some kind of approaching... what? Let me turn it around, and suggest that anyone who thinks the Sun is going to be shining on that hillside for much longer is a damned fool. No allusion or allegory meant here, oh no, perish the thought...
