oil on card 32x20cm
Firstly, there's some music associated with this. I was having a lot of trouble with the initial painting stages, then at about the fifth session (of nine) I had 'Memoryhouse' on while working, and everything seemed to settle out (although the rain's got nothing to do with the painting).
The source for this little painting was another, not very recent, snap from a train – taken three-and-a-half minutes east out of Stirling station, and looking North across the Forth towards the Ochil Hills. I've edited out a lot of electricity pylons and a mushroom farm, and have completely eradicated the town of Fallin. You can see the railway line and a general view here, though the weather's not quite as nice.
Compositionally, this one started off being all about the dark central trees and the perspective rush of the yellow field and its green 'scar', but as the painting developed I became more interested in the sky and the hills. During the photoshop compositional phase, the hills were reduced in size so as not to loom - as they appeared to when the photo was cropped – but they grew in importance as the painting progressed. The problems of the later stages of the work - as the balance between the sky & distance and the near fields & trees changed - were all about how to make the foreground solidly convincing, while at the same time not distracting from the really satisfying paint of the distance & sky.
Technique-wise, I'd decided to paint this in thicker paint than usual – with no acrylic underdrawing or tonal stuff. Not sure why, perhaps just to see if I could still do it. Well, that fell at the first hurdle. After very lightly placing the main elements in pencil, and plonking in the distant darker trees, I couldn't see how I was going to get the 'aerieness' of the sky and hills in thicker opaque paint. I did manage to do the mid-distance and foreground relatively thickly (for me), and I even used striated brushwork to help with the yellow wheatfield – and this may have helped a little when it came to the subsequent thinner layers. The hills were built very simply – first the blue-grey rocky bits, then the lighter grey-green bits to fill in and cover the white priming. Finally, they had a couple of thin blue-grey scumbles evenly stippled over them, which were gently finessed off with a very soft dry brush where I wanted the nearer slopes to be clearer.
All in all it was a bit of a grind though, and I'm not at all sure that I was seeing the two foreground fields properly or understanding how they worked. But there we are.
The best bits in this one? As usual, they were the bits that were painted without fuss or strain, and in this little painting that's the sky & hills. I'm very pleased, though I say it myself, with the colour and texure of the sky; I find it very satisfying and peaceful – definitely a Good Thing in these fraught and uncertain times.
I'm also very chuffed with the tonal restraint in the clouds. They are Cumulus Humilis, and I think they deserve to be in the title.
