Bleak and bright, this part of the woods was cleared during summer. A few evergreens survived the harvesting. The snowfall was only a dusting and was gone in a few hours.
I used a round bristle (No. 12) for most of the painting but I prefer the filbert shape. This is a flat brush with a rounded tip. Its shape allows it to be used like a round or a flat. As I’m now using a single brush this versatility is better with this method.
I used 4 colours here, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber, Dioxazine Purple and Cerulean Blue. The subtle Cerulean when mixed with Raw Sienna or Raw Umber produces those beautiful shades of green. You would expect this with the Raw Sienna but there is a definite unexpected green with Raw Umber, a brown colour.
This painting recounts that brief period as the sun rises above the layer of mist, soon to be burnt away without leaving a trace.
The painting lacks the depth of shadow I would normally apply in the early stages of painting. I used quite a lot of solvent in the mid distance and foreground. This is a bit like watercolour painting but the solvent evaporates much quicker than water. The structure of the scene was created by ‘drawing’ with a fine brush, these details to be later covered by ‘mist’, applied by dragging white over with a wide flat brush. This gave the softness and appearance of mist. The initial ‘drawing’ helped in the placing of the ‘mist’. Without these details I would probably have lost my way.
Mist is much more picturesque than fog. It hangs in low lying areas and is not a uniform blanket like fog. This of course allowed me to have a contrasting solid foreground giving a greater depth in the scene.
This small painting (12″x9″) was completed in under an hour and a half. There are 3 colours used, Raw Sienna, Raw Umber and Cerulean Blue. The details I mentioned earlier were painted with an inexpensive nylon ‘liner’, a long bristled brush used by sign writers. The rest of the painting was done with a single No.12 filbert hog-hair. You will notice I don’t clean this single brush during the painting session. I occasionally wipe off excess on a tissue, but not a full clean with solvent. Having a limited palette of 3 colours makes this work. Also I try and have the colour mixes ‘evolve’ from one into the next. So the colour on the brush contributes partially to the next colour required.
Variability in our weather, here in Ireland, is probably responsible for the unique appearance of our landscape. A week or two ago we had minus degrees Celsius and snow-like frost plus a North wind, to chill us even further. Last week the temperature was a muggy 15 Celsius. This is a Summertime temperature! But not unusual for Ireland.
This changeability of temperature, in the 0 to 4 degrees range, is responsible for intense weathering. Many years ago I worked as a science technician responsible for recording the effects of this weathering on building products. The most severe damage is caused by a ‘freeze thaw’ cycle. Our colleagues in Scandinavia thought they had it bad with a few dozen cycles per year. We were counting 200-400 per winter in the early 1980’s. Nothing lasts for very long when exposed to this for a few years, and it shows in the landscape.
Ironically, within this landscape there are places, like boglands (Winter Bogland), where beneath a layer of peat, perishable items like butter, leather, wood and even bodies are perfectly preserved for thousands of years.
This painting is about the dark, damp days of this past week. Dressed for winter and trying to keep dry, against driving rain is an almost claustrophobic experience. No clean blues and purples here, as in recent paintings. The colours I used in the overall were a combination of Olive Green and Raw Umber. The combination is like a Sepia colour seen in pen and wash sketches and I stayed with this sketchy look throughout the painting.
The sky was also a sketchy effort. I painted it with John Constable’s cloud study sketches in mind.
The colours used were Raw Sienna, Olive Green, Raw Umber, Cerulean Blue, plus black and white. There is no medium used, only White Spirits. The painting is 12″x9″ and was painted with a single No. 12 filbert bristle and a small nylon liner. Painting time was a little over an hour in a single session.
PictureS 