After a quick visit to Los Angeles to help my daughter Rosie settle into her
new flat, Barry and I dashed back to New Mexico last Saturday, (it's a long way to drive in one day!!). I only had one day to finish the big
painting before leaving last Tuesday.
I arrived back in Lincolnshire last Wednesday, unpacked, packed and paid some bills on my Dad's house, loaded up my little car with my beetle cabinet and beetle boxes and drove up to Scotland on Friday to deliver my work to the Royal Scottish Academy. Phew!! My work had been pre-selected for the Scottish Society of Artists exhibition and I am now waiting to see if I have made it through to the final exhibition. Luckily, I can stay with my friend Jasmin whilst I wait to hear.
As many of you know, Edinburgh is not flat, so we had to be very careful not to let the sack barrow run away with us! Here is Jasmin holding onto the cabinet. She is very strong!!
Last post, I had promised to include the stages of the large painting I was trying to finish before returning to the UK. I hope you enjoy them. Please don't hesitate to ask questions.
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| I used to cover the whole of the canvas and then wipe out, but I work more directly these days. |
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| Building up the image. |
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| Although from my reference material there wasn't a river, I put one in because I thought it needed something for the eye to follow into the landscape. Plus I wanted to echo a little of the sky colour and not just have a lot of green fields! |
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| At this stage I began to mix Ultramarine blue deep with the Burnt Sienna to create the darks. |
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| Big decisions to be made on the colour of the fields, to bring some fields forward and push others back. |
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| I found it difficult to find the appropriate colour for the distant hills, wanting them to be fairly true to the colour which is quite warm, but needing them to recede. Forming the structure of the hills. |
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| Adding the sky, hoping to create the atmosphere. |
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| Rolling Mist - The Lake District 40 x 64 Oil/Linen |
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When the whole painting was covered and I had worked on all the tree shapes, tweaking the lights and darks and the distant hills, I let the painting dry. Then I covered the distant hills and the sky in a milk glaze... transparent white, paynes grey and a tiny amount of ultramarine blue. This pushed the hills back.
Happy Thanksgiving to all those in the US. My birthday once again falls on Thanksgiving day. Last time it did that was when I was 50 and Barry and I took off to Oaxaca. That does sound very appealing, but I will be happy to stay in Scotland.
Bye for now.
