Fontstown

This little church would look quite at home in a Victorian painting. Just a few miles north of where I live, its on what was once the main Dublin road. In recent years the new motorways have taken the traffic off this route and its now a quiet rural area. I painted the scene as it was about 30 years ago with the old trees, probably as old as the church itself, still standing.

Cadmium Red was the underlying colour throughout the entire painting. Unfortunately the photograph above does not register the very feint pinks of the clouds. The video gives a better representation of these very subtle shades. I used my usual method of applying an unmixed layer of the strong red and allowing the solvent to evaporate, then adding an almost white layer on top. The blending and brushing brings up the red which can be controlled precisely. Also notice there is green added into the deep blue of the upper centre sky. This warms the blue but will also help to unite the sky and ground which will be predominately green in a narrow strip.

The green I used was Olive Green. Its a transparent natural green. I find it difficult to use in mixes as it gets ‘muddy’ when combined with some colours. Here I took advantage of its transparency and applied it raw with solvent only. The different tones in the green were due to the ‘blobs’ in the very liquid paint, that is, the thicker the ‘blob’ the darker the tone. Also there are red and blue under colours and this also added to the variations in colours.

This is a ‘watercolour’ technique (with solvent, not water). In watercolours the highlights produced in this way are rich enough due to the nature of paint and paper. In oils the highlights are anaemic and need the addition of opaque white.

This painting uses 4 colours (Raw Sienna, Cadmium Red, Olive Green, Prussian Blue) plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. The size is 18″ x 12″ and was completed in under 2 hours in a single session.

Here’s the video. See you soon.