oil on card 21x15cm
This is the second of the four Small Scale pieces. The source is a photograph snapped through the windscreen, from the passenger seat, going westwards along the A85, just west of Lochty – about here. It's a setting I've noticed while flashing past many times, and I'm glad that I finally did something about it. This painting has a very grey and limited palette, but then Perthshire's sometimes like that.
I'd always liked this group of trees, and the slight hump in the land. So it's a pity that I had to 'evolve' them all about to make them work. I disappeared three trees altogether and expanded the more distant tree blocks coming in from the left and right. I discovered fairly soon after starting that I wasn't at all happy with the large cumulus mases either, so they got an ad hoc tweaking as well. All for the best I suppose, but that meant that - because of the various tree-fellings and subsequent overpainted corrections - this piece took a lot longer than it should have.
Not much to say about the technique here except that I used some very careful application of methylated spirit to soften and remove the unwanted trees. Meths will destroy both dried oil and acrylic paint, so you have to be very careful not to let it sit on the surface for a moment longer than necessary. Too long and you may find that you're through your (acrylic) priming and looking at your base canvas/panel/card, and that's really not going to help with anything
It seems to have all worked out in the end, though, but I still prefer to get my compositions solved and in order before I start laying actual paint. It's a little wild in places – I wanted the ragged grey low fractus clouds to have been somehow a little more 'aerie' and insubstantial - but Madam quite likes the dynamism and energy, and I have to admit that she has a point.
Wow. Me, living on the edge. Who'd have thought...
