New Painting: Listening to the Sun Rise

It all began with the thought: “what if I were to use some of that fluorescent Sennelier orange as a coloured ground?”

First I created “tree trunks” with texture paste, left this overnight to dry completely. (It’s incredibly annoying to flatten a still-wet spot with a brush, but ever so tempting to be getting on with the painting!) Next came the fluorescent orange, plus fluorescent pink (well, you know, it was just sitting there feeling lonely) as well as some red (leftover sample of Liquitex artist’s spraypaint). I worked wet on wet and sprayed additional water to encourage the paint to spread. The result was certainly, urm, colourful. And intense. And bright.

Once this was fairly dry I laid the canvas flat and applied some fluid sepia and pearlescent white. I encouraged it to spread by spraying some water over it, then left it do meander its way around the texture. Left to dry, and repeated, and tweaked, and repeated, and pondered, and tweaked.

The final result is, to my eye, an interesting result of intense colour peering through intriguing darks. The in-house art critic, running his fingers across the surface, said it felt and looked like dragon skin. Take a look at the detail photos below, then share your thoughts in the comments section. (Click on the photos to see larger versions.)