There is a music track associated with this – it's 'Opening' by Philip Glass. I played it as I was starting the oil layers, and its cold relentlessness seemed to fit the mood.
I snapped the source landscape for this piece a while ago from the Crieff bus, but it hadn't sparked anything worth following up until I was looking for ideas in late February - around the time of the invasion in Ukraine. Seeing it again while flicking through old photos, both the movement sweeping across the landscape and the Gothic crow shapes in the trees made themselves apparent, and suggested a dreadful wind. I leant all the trees to the right to show that, and introduced the trio of crows on the left. In the trees, the beak shapes were switching about during the painting process - sometimes one, sometimes more, like infant birds screeching in the nest. It's a very odd experience when a shuffling of factors brings sudden relevance and recognition to the previously passed-over and disregarded.
This is on a panel prepared some eight years ago which, luckily, I had forgotten about. 'Luckily' because I hadn't organised any surfaces to paint on during my down-time, and had felt work coming on again. It has a grey oil primer – near exactly the colour and tone of the distant low clouds, which have just the barest touch of paint on them. This ruled out any acrylic under-drawing, so objects were placed with crayon then developed directly with oil paint. I also used a different oil medium mix - Stand Oil with an increased proportion of Damar Varnish. It's very sticky, and quite unsuitable for painting large areas evenly, but it's very nice to work with on a small scale.
For some reason I found it very difficult to arrive at the final tonality of the near grass and especially the 'real' crows. They are quite finely drawn (aided by a magnifying glass) and were at one point almost jet black. Their combination of sharp, focussed marks and black tones hooked the eye so quickly that I dulled them down - I now much prefer them almost hidden in the weeds. They're quite rewarding once you see them, but the down-side is that I fear the casual viewer will just stroll by the painting without bothering to look too closely. However, I'm not sure that I'm prepared, at this point, to do anything about that.
On the positive side, I enjoyed doing the sky, and didn't feel too constrained to adhere rigidly to the source material. It's rather bleak and chilly but has some luminosity, in contrast to the umbrous and murky landscape.
Which pangs my heart given the painting's genesis.
