oil on card 36x18cm
There is a music track to go with this. I didn't have one until the very last session, when I happened to have Max Richter's film music playing in the background. The image resonated and came to life during 'The Haunted Ocean pt I' from 'Waltz with Bashir' (an extraordinary film – watch it if you haven't already). Actually, it hit me like a brick.
The basic composition – near, sloping, ground against distant clouds and land across sea – was sparked from photos taken on a bike jaunt around Arthur's Seat. It was an early March afternoon, and when I came round this bend there was this line of majestic cumulus clouds over Fife, lit almost horizontally. It's a wide 2:1 proportion, and this allows more to be made of the actual horizon area without having to fill the upper sky. I've changed a lot of things since the initial stages of composition – photoshopping problem stuff out and possible solutions in. For a long time my source foreground was very bland and formless, so I concocted a more interesting mash-up from a batch of snaps I took on Blackford Hill (getting images for gorse, and grass and path forms for something else ages ago). At one point there was a barking dog – which I've just (this second, writing this! ) realised harks back to 'Waltz with Bashir' (shivers).
A small painting, this is a preliminary problem-solving exercise before starting the large one. I have one very minor reservation about it – that the upper blue sky may be just a tiny bit too dark. I'll go with it though, because I like the intensity of the colour. All in all though, it's paid off – I've changed some of the grass so that the curve of the path is more pronounced. There's now a better visual link between the two sets of figures than had been originally planned. The three militiamen are unashamedly re-cycled from 'Day's Work Done'. In that painting, the results of their work are out of sight, maybe beyond the ridge the men are descending from. Here, they are present.
Technically/paint-wise this one isn't very different from the previous few paintings, so here's a little computer/image/technical tip. I've been meaning to point this out, as some folk may be frustrated by the small size of the images as displayed on the blogpage. (You may know about this already – if so, skip this section). This for Chrome by the way, but bear with.
OK. Click the image above the text on the screen - this will give a larger image on its own. This is nice, but we can do better. Right-click this image for a menu, and choose 'Open image in new tab'. When you go to that New tab, the image will be larger, and your cursor will be a 'plus' sign. Click, and you'll get the largest image the site can offer you, that is, an image 1600 pixels wide, and you may be able to see how much cat hair and 'bits' get onto what seems a smooth surface.
You can make this appear yet bigger though. Right-click, and 'Save' it. You can then expand the saved image even further with your photo viewer – your computer will have come with one installed. The sharpness will go blurry the further in you zoom, but you might get something from it – it will differ from image to image.
That's the rigmarole for Chrome. Firefox is more or less the same, except they have a simpler 'View image' instead of Chrome's 'Open in new tab' function. I presume Internet Explorer and the other systems do more or less the same thing. I hope that's been helpful...
So, as you were. Now for some news.
I'm making my final turn now into September's show at the Open Eye Gallery, in Dundas Street. There's only one other painting in progress at the moment – and that HAS to be done by the end of July. In the meantime, and when that piece is done, I'll be getting on with the organisational stuff so it's not all last-minute. My diary says that the show will be open on Friday 6th September, and be up until 28th September, and I'll give you more info in the next couple of posts.
I think this is a very good little painting, but I'm not sure – at this moment, having just finished it - whether I will be presenting 'Far Cumulus' for the exhibition. I like it very much, and had quite a turn when I realised that I'd finished it. It'll let it go at some point, maybe when the bigger one's done, but I'm not sure that I'll have had enough of it. I know that my best work should be in the approaching show - but, if you don't mind, maybe not quite yet.
