Cumulonimbus - Okop

oil on card 21x15cm

A dramatic piece of weather in South West Russia, near a village called Okop. I can't find any information about Okop at all, but it looks like a generally well-maintained enough little village with a bus stop at one end, and some pleasantly traditional woodwork on some of the houses. Again, no subversion here.

No sound tracks either, not even the soughing of the wind in the grass. Which I hope you're imagining now.

Compositionally this is virtually a transcription of the original google streetview image source. A wood has been disappeared from the right, and this helped bring out the proximity tension between the cloud's 'snout' and underside, and the silhouetted wood beneath it.

I was in a hurry to get this started, and while rummaging around in my bag of card offcuts in the hope of finding something already primed, I came across a forgotten piece that I'd primed in blue. It must have been from about a decade ago, when I went through a (very) short phase of live cloud window sketching in oil paint. Finding that saved me a lot of time preparing a surface, and it was blue! (Probably Prussian Blue and Flake White) Lucky me!

The paintwork in this piece was kept loose and done fairly efficiently, despite my being a bit conflicted about how to handle the cirrusy bits and the secondary clouds. It's probably ended up a bit more pink in the upper left than I intended - a last-minute desire to make the icy plume emerging from the big cloud a bit more interesting, but I think the exaggerated pink underneath the base and the small clouds to the right is quite rewarding. I'm pleased with the softness of the cumulus, and the glare of the denser white highlights, so let's maybe concentrate on those, if you don't mind.

I'm not at all sure that an actual meteorologist would class this as an actual Cumulonimbus. They – the clouds - are usually towering, giant heaps violently powering up through the atmosphere until their heads flatten and spread out against a freezing layer. This one appears to be freezing – indicated by the cirrus plume – quite low, even within the cumulus itself. It's also very long and narrow – the painting's viewpoint is looking along it. From an alternative view further down the road to the Southeast it appears much more glorious in its full length, with a rainbow giving a bit more scale, and it is made plain just how powerful the wind must be in the upper levels to be ripping the cirrus away from the cumulus like that.

I'll have to leave it a couple of weeks to cure a bit more before varnishing etc, then it'll be handed in to the gallery. This is the last of this year's Small Scales for the Open Eye Gallery, where the show is on-line only. It previews for those with a password on 21st November, and opens on the 22nd for the ordinaires.

It's been nice working on the very small stuff for a while, but it'll be good to get back to working on slightly larger pieces that I don't need to check with a magnifying glass for a change. Maybe due for another eye test and new specs come the new year...

 

Birch - Kuliki

 

oil on card 21x15 cm

This is the penultimate of my contributions to the upcoming Small Scales show at the Open Eye gallery. Going well so far.

There is some music for this - a cool ambient track from Radiohead's 'Kid A'. It was playing as I was touching in the final hints of glaze, and it fitted very nicely with that moment. However, I went through a kick of playing the then youthful Radiohead's first ever album - 'Pablo Honey' - round about this time, so these paintings are quite strongly linked with the angsty screaming abdabs of 'You' and the strident vulnerability of 'I can't' and 'Lurgee'. An underrated album? Dunno. It is very raw, but I certainly couldn't get enough of it over the last few weeks.

The primary image source is in S.W Russia, near a wood (that may have once been a tiny settlement or farm) called Kuliki, and it presented itself as a very arresting random find on google streetview. As far as I can tell, Kuliki – Кулики - is a generic term for 'Wading birds', like we say 'Hawks' or 'Ducks' without being too specific. The term includes Curlews, more associated in Britain with open fields and moors, and which have a very distinct and haunting call.

Compositionally it's all about wide open space, long shadows, and The Light on The Birch Tree. The road going straight down the middle in the source location didn't work for me though. Luckily - and with the magic of google streetview - by following the road north and finding another heading east I found a whole lot more wide open space and a new variety of foregrounds - all with the right shadows and streaky lights with which to recompose over the road. I also elongated the birch tree a little to fill more of the sky above it – which I think works better.

Not much to say about the technicals here – just a pretty straightforward gouache dot grid on grey priming, then straight on with placing objects and areas (dark tones and cloud lights first) in oil paint. The sky colour evolved very pleasingly – this was my chance try out my new Isaro Deep Blue, with a second layer of Ultramarine/Ivory Black/Zinc White padded on very sparingly towards the top. This very powerful blue is a factory blend of Ultramarine/Pthalo Blue/Zinc White which is just about smack on what I'm usually aiming for to work a bright, clear blue sky – with the magical property of appearing slightly greener as it thins. Just like the real thing (mostly/often/sometimes) does towards the horizon. It's not cheap, but then I'm only really ever going to use it quite thinly.

I made a bit of an effort to make this a 'small painting', as opposed to a 'miniature', by consciously being a bit looser and trying not to get pulled into too much fine detail. 'Letting the paint do the work' – as Mr Knight (my school Art teacher) used to say. I think I mostly succeeded, but it was difficult not to get caught up and drawn into the sunlit top of the birch.

Quite chuffed with this wee piece. I think it's an engagingly pleasant little landscape which I was very lucky to come across. There's no subversive element here; at this scale, that's very difficult, especially as I didn't want to get too 'dragged in' to superfine detail.

I hope the images I have made of it are accurate enough. It'll probably be varnished and off to the gallery within a few weeks, and I (and certainly Madam) will miss it if it doesn't come back.