Mohkkejavri

oil on card 21x15cm

This is the last of the four Small Scale pieces done for the Open Eye gallery – finished on time for the end of November, but un-blogged due to my not having anything else finished to post about. I did have a mood-setter for this - the track 'One World' from John Martyn's album of the same name. Apart from his voice, it's quite a sparse and cold sound that seems to match the landscape.

The source image is taken – google Streetview of course – from the wilds of Finnmark, the most northern part of Norway. I'm pretty sure that 'Mohkkejavri' is this lake's name, but there seem to be four or five other lakes called that too, and I suspect that it may be just Finnish, or Sami, for 'Little lake' or something. The composition is a fairly straight transfer from the source, though the the foreground has had some water shifted in from along the road so that the bank is visible all the way to the right corner, and a couple of trees have been edited out. It's really all about the golden colour against the blue, and the clear low light.

As usual, the masses and forms were lightly pencilled in, then reinforced with quick-drying fluid acrylic underpainting, in Ultramarine this time. Once that first stage looked secure, the more natural colours and tones were built up in (mostly) transparent oil and varnish layers. The slightly exaggerrated orange colour is a mixture of modern transparent 'Indian Yellow' and a very fine-particled oxide red (on his company's website, Michael Harding's comments about this pigment include an amusing anecdote involving the painter Frank Auerbach). To maximise the effect of the glazing, once this piece was done I finished it with a light coat of straight gloss picture varnish to lush out the surface and make the light bounce back through the paint layers like stained glass.

I suspect this little painting could have been a bit better if I hadn't had to hurry the last stages due to the possibility of jury service (I actually did get selected and had to spend four days attending the court) but I was pleased with how the water turned out, especially the near channel. I had a couple of false starts with it – involving way too much toxic Pthalo Blue – but I managed to re-assert a sensible base colour, and then built up the depth with Ultramarine, and a final Burnt Umber and Ivory Black layer for the warm dark darks. I think the scratched-out and re-glazed near foliage is very effective, especially on the right foreground bank, and I have to admit that I'm very pleased with the single stretched-out cloud.

Well, that's all the arty excitement over for 2019. I've finally got a couple of 'normal' paintings under way, with a few more planned and ready to start once the panels are made and surfaces prepared. With a bit of luck the first one on the go, a small sky painting, should be ready early in the New Year, and that should be me back in a regular rhythm – hopefully fairly uninterrupted – for the rest of the year.

Hope you all had a good Xmas holiday, and here's wishing everybody a happy, and above all healthy, 2020