Ivy Island

The heavens are in turmoil and the trees, ghosts of last summer, look on. Hallowe’en.

This painting is mostly about the sky. I tried to vary the proportions of each colour in the mixtures to give slightly different colours in each formation of clouds. I am using 4 colours and they are all present in these paint mixes.

When painting ‘wet on wet’, pickup on the brush is always an issue. In this painting I am using a ‘modifier’ brush to manipulate the paint after it has been applied. For example, in the sky I used a single brush (No 12 filbert, blue handle in video below) to apply the colour. As the colour mixes are evolving one into the next, I don’t need to clean this brush. A small amount of Liquin medium was used, as solvent on its own was evaporating too fast and the layers were not blending smoothly. This bending, or ‘modifying’, was done with a wide short bristled filbert (cream coloured handle).

Also, painting the few sparse remaining leaves on the trees was done with the tip of the large No 12 filbert. This applied the paint in heavy liquid blobs on the wet under colour of the sky but leaving a distinctive brush pattern. The ‘modifier’ in this case was a round bristle which disguised the pattern and blended the paint into the background sky colour.

Here’s the video of the process. See you soon.