Bramble’s

Today’s job was to prepare a couple of experimental crackle paste surfaces to use later in the week but I found myself pining to do some painting, and this is the result.  It was a last minute decision to decide to do some painting, so I hadn’t planned what I was going to do.  In that situation, I should really have started from an abstract and tried to develop it into something real.  But, no, I looked through my collection of painting ideas and went with a dog called Bramble going for a walk where there were some brambles.  Bramble’s owner makes a living from teaching grammar and punctuation to grown up business people, so if there are people that think the name of the painting shouldn’t have an apostrophe, that’s half funny.

I thought I’d try using up some of the pthalo blue that I still have hanging around.  And the painting is in green cool, so transparent yellow and quinacridone magenta also appear.  Most of the painting was done in the blue and yellow, and raw sienna for the path but I found it was looking way too bright and sickly, even with the strip of fog through the middle.  So I put in some burnt umber and Prussian blue in places.  Then I added some red – quinacridone magenta in the tree on the left and in some other places, and a bit of cadmium red in the bush in the bottom right.  The dog was the usual wet into wet effort: Prussian blue into quinacridone magenta into transparent yellow.

After all this, everything was looking better but all a bit boring, and still a bit too sunny.  I wanted some moisture in the air (to make the fog fit in better) so added loads of big drips of water in an attempt to get some interesting cauliflowers going.  I added some salt too – big chunks and granulated.

And what have you got?  At the end of the day?  What have you got?  To take away?

A pretty middling painting, to be honest.  It has good points and bad points but they’re not extremely good or extremely bad.  Good points are the tree trunk on the left, the looseness in the foggy area and the red vs green and yellow vs purple complimentary contrasts.  Bad points?  Well, the salt did some weird things.  It’s formed fairy rings and attached itself so firmly to the paper that it won’t come off.  The dog doesn’t look like a dog, let alone like Bramble.  Maybe it’s a cat.  I think this one will grow on me though.

Actually, it’s not grown on me.  This one’s been cup up and is being used as collage material.