Arran - Altocumulus

oil on card 21x15cm

A short post – with very little tech stuff for a change.

This is a view of Arran from Bute spliced into a sky of altocumulus clouds snapped from a train. Or vice versa.

In the original composition there was another – distant, more solid - bank of stratus cloud that sat behind Arran. Like many ideas, it seemed a good one at the time. I just couldn't make it work convincingly though, and overpainted it at quite a late stage so that it was more like atmospheric haze - quite a dramatic demotion, but an effective one.

I think I've made a fair enough stab at the clouds here, though I fear the upper cloudlets have ended up a bit too lumpy. These altocumulus rafts are very complex, and I'm sure I could've achieved a more ethereal feel – which is what I love about them - over more time and a larger area (and with probably a bit more thought). The island and the sea aren't too bad though and I'm very pleased with the clear transparent blue* in the right half of the sky. 

Lastly, this little painting seemed extraordinarily difficult for me to photograph – in real life it does actually look a little better than the image above (especially the blue). I usually manage to produce something not too far removed from the actual piece, but I do not claim to be an experienced photographer, and I have no idea why that should be with this particular painting. Very annoying.

That's all four taken in to the gallery this afternoon. Hopefully they'll be on the wall (with 350 others) when the show opens. That's at 'On a Small Scale', the Open Eye Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh, from 26 November - 22 December 2018. Definitely worth a look just for the sheer variety of the work on display. I'm going to leave posting the last piece – Fence - till December, for the very pragmatic reason that I won't have anything even half-ready to post for that month.

* First thin layer - cloth dabber - Ultramarine + Zinc White, in Stand Oil + Damar Varnish: second layer Ultramarine + barest touch of Red Shade Pthalo Blue and Zinc White in a mix of Stand and Walnut oils, printed/modified/faded with cloth dabber...