October

Winter’s coming. An icy dew at the start of the day and a mellow mist in the evenings. I was trying to convey this transition, from light to dark and Autumn to Winter. Its about the feeling of year’s end and all that it entails.

This is similar in technique and subject matter to recent paintings. Here the sky has more prominence, not a backdrop to the foliage as in the others. I was thinking of painting the sky in a similar ‘dotty’ way to the rest of the painting, but decided against it as it would destroy the sense of reality which is most important in this painting. I want the viewer to enter into this world and feel its real. So in a small way the sky is a backdrop, detached from the landscape.

The other difference from recent paintings is the extremely limited palette. Just three colours, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Yellow and Prussian Blue. There was no medium used at all, just White Spirits. As in the last painting I recorded the action on the palette as I believe this was helpful to other painters. The process of achieving the large array of colour from such a limited palette is a useful exercise and seeing how its done is the only way to convey this. Three colours is the minimum number of colours to achieve a natural landscape. The red, yellow and blue when combined will produce all colours of the rainbow. Its the individual pigments which skew the colours in different directions. In this painting, the intense colour and tinting power of Cadmium Yellow gave the overall warm colour cast. Prussian Blue is also as powerful, and this counteracted the yellow. Burnt Sienna is not as strong a colour as the other two but appeared in every part of the painting, from the grey of the clouds to the fallen leaves in the foreground, moderating the harsh yellow and blue.

I will post the video later in the week. See you then.