Frank’s Wood, Leith Hill, Surrey

It’s getting cold and wet outside so the number of watercolour and oil paintings that I’ll be doing the rest of this year is numbered. Ā Today I fancied having a go with the oil pastels. Ā This is my first go with the bigger, 12 inch by 9 paper. Ā It’s a scene in Frank’s Wood, inspired by a photo by David Hall that I probably found on the BBC News website. Ā I’m trying to track David down but have had no luck so far. Ā The David Hall photographer whose work this most resembles tells me the original work is not his; there’s another David Hall photographer who I’ve tried to contact but with no luck so far,
Painting on this size paper is much easier and more fun. Ā It’s all less fiddly. I can just get on with the painting. Ā I started by adding in rough lines with one of the pastels, then vaguely shaded in the trees, path, grass and bluebells with the sides of four appropriately coloured pastels. Ā And then I just went out and enjoyed myself. Ā For each of those four types of shape, I picked out at least three relevant colours from my box and dotted them in. Ā For the path and the greens, some places were lighter than others and reflected this by using different colours in different places. Ā Then I used my fingers and some tools to mix the colours together on the paper.
This gave me an underpainting. Ā This was never going to be the final result as I wanted some texture in the bluebells. Ā So during the next stage, as well as adding more colours to the trees, path and greens (in particular in any areas that were short of colour and too white looking), I dabbed in some bluebells with the intention of keeping them as dabs rather than blending them together. Ā I did end up blending some of the more distant bluebells, but that’s just sensible: you can’t have both the foreground and middleground in focus. Ā I also did a little bit of scraping underneath the bluebells in places.
When I stepped back, I thought the painting didn’t hang together, with the trees, path, bluebells and greenage looking like a disconnected team. Ā So I added some blues to all the tree colours and suddenly everything looked better again. Ā The trees, bluebells and greenage definitely all work well together but I wonder whether I should have added any more colours to the path.
Anyway, I rate this one a success and it’s up for sale. To see the price, click here.

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