Tree - near Orenburg

oil on card 21x15 cm

This is the second of the batch of this year's Small Scale pieces. There is a track to go with it – a short piece from Max Richter's Infra. It's got a sweep which matches the location - The Russian steppe grasslands. This specific spot is near Orenburg, a city about 100km west of the southernmost tip of the Ural mountains, and about the same distance north of the Kazakhstan border.

It's mostly about the sky, but the tree is very important. I flipped it from leaning into the slant of the cloud banks – as it does in the source - to leaning to the left away from them, as if in reaction. The 'curl' of its right side was formed accidentally during the flipping process and adds a tasty bit of character. Having done that, when the whole photoshop assembly was reversed left/right when checking the composition, it seemed as though the tree was shouting at the sky. Flipped back, as painted, the tree seemed more relaxed, and in awe of the sky – or at least enjoying the spectacle. Which is what I was seeing.

This batch of Small Scales are all done with the same grey priming and straight-to-oil-paint system, but there's a lot more scratching of the wet paint to indicate the foreground grasses in this one. I've exaggerated the pinkness of the grass slightly, and the lower sky to the right of the tree has a blue haze which perhaps doesn't show so well in this photograph. It might be easy to miss in a gallery of loudly competing images, but I think the simplicity of the composition allows the very limited colour scheme to bloom, which I quite like.

A little snippet of background information, just so you know. The Eurasian Steppe – which stretches almost unbroken from Eastern Europe to China - is subdivided into various types. The area here is part of the Pontic/Caspian Steppe (the Black Sea being the Roman 'Pontus Euxinus'); the land of horse-cultured nomadic peoples like the Scythians, Goths, Kazakhs (Cossacks) and Huns, who were in turn overrun (or overridden by?) the Mongols from the Gobi-Manchurian Steppe even further east.

The whole show – some hundreds of pieces – is online now at On a Small Scale Online and is always worth a look.

(My 'Cumulus – Lendum' seems to have disappeared though. Hopefully sold)