Windy Gap

An explosion of light here, near a gap in the flat hills of County Laois just West of where I live. There are touches of Autumn in the air and the beginning of the season of mists.

Cadmium Yellow in mixes of Dioxazine Purple and Cobalt Blue with touches of Permanent Rose. It sounds like an exotic recipe and the resultant glowing colours are just right for this landscape.

An abundance of green is lovely in a landscape but I find it difficult to manage in a painting. In a photograph of this scene the grassy fields are like smooth carpets and I will always add a little extra growth to the grass to produce a more interesting ‘shaggy’ look. In the painting above the field on the left was one such area. In a featureless area like this, I build up the colour by gradually adding colours I’ve used in other areas, making sure that the richest, deepest shades are closest to the viewer.

This painting uses only 4 colours, Cadmium Yellow, Permanent Rose, Dioxazine Purple and Cobalt Blue plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. For a while I was using Liquin to slow down the drying of the Alkyd colours I’m using. A better solution was to add standard white oil paint 50/50 with the Alkyd Titanium white. This white finds its way into the lighter final colours and does slow the drying. The shadow colours are better if they are beginning to dry as the painting progresses. This is helped by using solvent only which evaporates fairly quickly.

The painting is 17″ x 12″ and was painted in about 2 hours.

Here’s the video of the process, see you soon.