Near Vicarstown

The location of this scene is close to last post’s painting. The signs of human activity is here with the half sunken boat and the cottages in the distance. I was hoping to have a well ordered painting and started in the usual way. After 1 hour of painting the sky, it was not great. This painting nearly didn’t happen. The sky was stiff and hard, with too much contrived design. I abandoned it and was about to wipe the paint off while it was still wet. Then I remembered my own advice to beginners, ‘leave it for 24 hours then decide’. 24 hours later I completely rescued the sky in 5 minutes. It just needed to be brushed in a different direction?? Isn’t that crazy? The disorder created just worked. I will have the video of the process for next post and you will see what I mean. This is a common enough occurrence with my paintings (see videos), one minute it looks disastrous and then it completely changes. Painting is always ‘knife-edge’ for me.

It reminds me that the physical nature of paint really does steer the painting in certain directions. Learning the boring stuff like materials and their handling is critical if you want to control the painting. As a realist painter its difficult to work towards an image while the paint decides to go somewhere else. Speaking of paint, the colours used in this painting were Burnt Sienna (red), Yellow Ochre (yellow) and Cobalt & French Ultramarine Blue (plus black & white). I really don’t know why I thought the extra blue would have been an advantage. It wasn’t. The medium was Liquin plus 5% ‘Stand Linseed Oil’, plus double-up the volume with White Spirits.

I’ll post the video of the painting process in a few days.