Artist in Scotland (was on the Isle of Skye, now in Aberdeenshire)
Popped into Skyeworks Gallery this afternoon to drop off a few Wearable Art pieces and some cards, only to discover the “Moon Over the Minch” had sold this morning. That’s two big paintings in two days! And, yes, I did celebrate with a piece of cake in the bakery downstairs.
What a delightful way to start a week, with the sale of a painting! The person who’s bought “Round the Corner” had connected with it at Skyeworks Gallery, but wasn’t sure if it would be too large for the space available, so we arranged for me to bring it along for a viewing in situ as it was only a few miles south of my studio. End result is that “Round the Corner” has, aptly, found a home around the corner.
Remember the magenta tree painting I started in June? Well it’s been stuck in “pondering stage” as I tried to decide what I would do with it. There were bits I really liked (e.g. the sense of movement behind the tree trunks), bits I didn’t (e.g. harsh darks), and various directions I could take it. About the only certainty was that I wouldn’t add any more paint until I had a definite plan.
After much procrastination pondering I decided I would take it for a walk on the dark side, rather than light, emphasizing shadows rather than sunlight. Why? Perhaps it’s the shorter days, perhaps thoughts about how well people responded to “Listening to Bluebells“, which is quite dark, but I’ve no real explanation other than that’s what I felt most like trying.
So out came a bottle of glazing medium, burnt umber and that favourite, Prussian blue. Why these two colours? Because both are strong darks, brown would enhance the sense of “tree” and blue “sky/rain”. The blue glazed over magenta would also give heathery purples, which that other favourite dark, perelyne green, wouldn’t.?This was the result; overall I’m pleased with the moodiness of it, but will do some more pondering, looking at it in different light conditions. The In-House Art Critic has proposed the title: “Plaid Glade“.
I was asked by someone who got married on Skye this summer if I would create a sheep painting for her in which the weather was sunny and the Cuillin were in the background. A few other details in the composition also relate to the occasion. This animated .gif is a sequence of photos taken while it was in progress:
Here’s the almost-final painting, and a detail from it showing the tiny flock on the hillside. The title the in-house critic and I agreed on: “Love View“.
The inspiration for titles for paintings comes from all sorts of places; sometimes a title even leads to a particular composition (such as “Lambic Pentameter”). In this instance, the comments on my abstracted painting inspired by a rocky shore about it looking like people and war led the in-house art critic to suggest the military term “Beachhead” as a title. Works for me on several levels, and thus this painting now has a title.
Sometimes an idea takes quite some time to make it into paint (and not every idea does). I’ve previously done a rocky shore as a pencil drawing and in charcoal, as well as an etching. This version doesn’t have a sea/sky horizon.
I started by creating a dark ground, using a chromatic black mixed with texture medium. Once this had dried, I “drew” with various colours of Golden’s High Flow Acrylics. Once this had dried, I painted the sea and ‘tops’ of the rocksy, again using very fluid paint. I’m now, once again, waiting for paint to dry, and will then access whether I’ll be doing anything else to it. Right now I think not, but looking in it in different light tomorrow will tell me.
Given Monday’s Motivator to Keep Striving, I thought I’d share work-in-progress photos of one of the paintings I’ve been working on this week, one that’s been testing my resilience. Wildflowers are something that have bounced around my mind’s eye for some time, but a subject I’ve not translated into paint much. “Listening to Trees” was the first time I painted foxgloves to my satisfaction. My idea with this painting was for it to echo myforest paintings, but be only flowers. It’s a large canvas, 1×1 metre (about 39×39 inches).
The first photo shows where the painting was when I downed brushes yesterday. To my mind, very much still a work-in-progress that lacked oomph. It needed more tonal contrast, a stronger sense of sunlight, pinker foxgloves. The last thing I had done was to add a stronger dark tone using a mixture of Prussian blue, burnt umber, and perylene green. It was a bit streaky but once dry my plan was to do something similar with some “sunlight” and “blue sky”, then reassess.
How long would this take? Would it work? Doing it is the only way to know. I might make it worse, but ultimately that’s irrelevant as it’s not right now anyway.
Awake at four this morning thinking about this painting, I headed back into my studio to give it another go. I dug out some fluid medium, cadmium yellow, phthalo blue, and titanium white, then played around with very fluid paint and gravity. This photo shows where the painting is now. I like it more — it’s less static — but will reassess once it’s daylight. Studio cat seemed to approve though.
Update: I ultimately decided I did like what I’d done and made only minor tweaks.
When it’s bluebell season, the colours in woodlands changes yet again. In some places the flowers carpet the woodland floor, influencing the colour of everything you see, almost as if I’m wearing turquoise-tinted glasses. This painting is a compilation of memories of walking and sitting amongst bluebells in different woodlands. The dominant colour used was a phthalo turquoise, a strong, staining colour that easily takes all your mixed colours on your palette if you’re not paying attention. It also teaches you to clean a brush properly because if there’s a little left in a brush, you’ll know about it!
This detail from the painting is about life size. As you get closer and closer to the canvas, the pieces of paint start dissolving into a colourful chaos. It also reveals the different colours in the dark background, created with various glazed layers. The variation in colour showing through is created by working with a big brush and not meticulously covering every millimetre but letting there be ‘missed bits’.
