Birches

Bogland and Birches, and the first signs of Spring. This is a very small painting (11″x8″). Again only 3 colours used, Burnt Umber (red), Raw Sienna (yellow) and French Ultramarine (blue), plus black and white. This is the lower limit regarding painting size with which I am comfortable. Claustrophobic is a good description for this size. Its to do with ‘vistas’, I think. The openness of landscape is restricted. This size is not small for many types of paintings, still life and figure painting included. I was looking at the relationship between fine lines and painting size. By reducing the size of the painting the relative size of fine lines can become impossibly narrow.

As I concentrate on lines and shapes there is an interesting thing happening regarding colour, or lack of it. 3 colours are enough for me at the moment. If I have the visible spectrum covered, with red, yellow and blue, even though they are not ‘rainbow’ versions of the colours, I can achieve a realistic effect. This is very odd, considering the billions of colours in the actual landscape.

Here’s the video of the process, which lasted about an hour and a half.