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)

 

Cumulus - Lendum

oil on card 21x15 cm

A little piece – the first since the summer – and moving back into the swing of things.

This one's based on a google streetview source near Lendum, in northern Denmark. There's no specific music associated with this, but I did listen to a lot of J.S. Bach's 48 preludes and Fugues, and this is but one...

It's all about the cloud and the clear blue sky, of course. I played around with the source image quite a lot - flipping the composition from left to right, then isolating the landscape and flipping that against the sky, which worked a bit better. I tweaked with the skyline and some of the tree groups, and got an arrangement I was happy enough to go ahead with. It's been very pleasant working on a fairly simple composition for a change, and without overly committing myself, I think it's a strong enough idea to make into a bigger piece sometime.

A brief delve into the technical side here. The priming was grey for a change, dot gridded with gouache, and the compositional elements placed and outlined with thin oil paint. Any visible grid dots were then washed off with water (much easier and quicker than rubbing a pencil grid away) and the painting was filled in with fairly opaque oil paint. Forms etc were subsequently developed with thinner transparent glazes and scumbles. The clarity of the blue was quite important – I used Michael Harding's King's Blue, with a touch of Winsor & Newton Pthalo Blue (Red shade) – just enough to knock the Ultramarine's violet tendency down a bit and add a bit of intensity. The King's Blue I'm using is an older tube, and is a factory mix of Ultramarine, Titanium White, and Zinc White. Harding withdrew all Zinc White from his paint mixes a few years ago though; a research paper had demonstrated that thick layers of Zinc White oil paint were prone to breaking up. Personally, I can't see any reason on Earth why anyone would use Zinc White in thick layers as it is such a semi-opaque pigment and one of the longest-drying oil pigments available, but there we are.

This is the first to finish of a few postcard-sized pieces being done for the annual Open Eye gallery's 'On a Small Scale' show. The timing of their invitation could not have been better; I had been attending a chiropractor for about a month and was just beginning to feel the benefits. To cut quite a long and rather painful story short, since early Spring my back pain and accompanying sciatica had ruled out most artwork and had latterly made easel work – standing or sitting - impossible. I began this treatment – basically corrective spinal adjustments, stretches & exercises, and rigorous attendance to posture (crossing legs at the knee is Verboten!) – in August, and that work is now starting to kick in. I, and my knees, can still be a bit weak and creaky about town, but the lumbar improvement so far is certainly making life for me (and Madam) a Whole Lot Better.

Which is nice...