The main subject here is, of course, the sky. It's sourced from a photograph taken a few years ago, looking north from the National Museum of Scotland's rooftop terrace. There were waves of heavy Cumulonimbus shower clouds passing over all day, and it was worth shifting myself to a good vantage point to get some useful reference images.
Most of them were more bulky than towering, and had extraordinarily soft and 'hairy' cirrus upper levels. There were also clusters of smaller cumulus forming at their bases - which is unusual – and the one in the painting had an intense white light bouncing out of its core. I didn't want to include the city skyline, though, so I needed to find an alternative landscape. A particular vista looking north in Perthshire came to mind, and - being too lazy to find that set of photos – I took the dramatic version on offer at google streetview and ran with it.
Inspired by the streetview image, I planned and carried out an interesting experiment. After the usual thin acrylic underdrawing, I put an Indian Yellow oil paint wash onto the sunlit foreground – a transparent 'stain' over the acrylic and the primer. The idea was that this would show through subsequent layers, and mark a difference between the sunlit/non-sunlit areas. Unfortunately, I then had to put a lot of effort into dulling that yellow foreground down as it was pulling the eye away from the clouds. It was an interesting experiment, though, and while maybe not the best idea for this painting, might well prove a useful technique for something more suitable.
That wasn't the only thing that went wrong (sometimes a painting will paint itself, and sometimes they resist. This one was definitely one of the latter). When cleaning off some excess blue on the clouds – a pretty straightforward action on a firm surface - some of the cloudwork got cleaned off too, right down to the primer. I had to build up the surface again, which was very annoying, and so was definitely a Bad Thing, and meant that the painting took longer than it should've done.
Every cloud has a silver lining, however, and that delay meant that my order for M.Graham's Titanium White arrived just in time for me to use it for the final highlights. Unlike most paint producers, who grind their pigments in linseed oil, this American company grinds all of their colours in walnut oil. I generally find Titanium Whites rather greasy and unappealling, but the walnut oil gives this one a lovely soft and mobile feel. It may dry a bit more slowly than the linseed stuff, but there are mediums and driers which can accelerate the drying/curing process if necessary, and this walnut-based white won't yellow as much as a linseed one. This could be quite a good find, and it's not a daft price either.
It's May now, getting on for proper summer, and - fingers crossed very firmly - it looks like the Covid emergency might be slackening off here. Madam and I have both had two jabs, and are in our post-vaccination resistance-building period. The Museum is open again for pre-booked timed slots, and with a bit of luck it'll soon be OK to turn up and ascend to the NMS rooftop terrace spontaneously, without having to pre-arrange a visit.
As I say, fingers crossed...
