I Can Read Your Mind

One of the things on my list of outstanding projects was to put a painting on the Perspex sheet that used to be a window in a playhouse and that was painted with watercolour ground a while ago with my artistic left eye peeking through.  So that’s the journey I took today.  I learned a big lesson from Looking At You a week or so ago and that was that I couldn’t just put down any old painting; the eye needed to somehow harmonise with the painting.  It’s pretty obvious, I know, but I’m not one for heading down the clearest path.

So, today, to get the painting to work, I make two important sensible decisions.  First, I was careful with my subject matter to choose something where the eye was located inside something rather than sitting in empty space like last time.  I found a photo of the Cheesewring on Bodmin Moor (something that I’ve painted before) where the stones were in the left of the scene and where the eye would sit within them.  And, second, I chose some sensible colours.  I picked out Winsor blue green shade and Indian yellow as they produced a green that was similar to the one in the eye painting and went for Winsor red as the red because (i) I thought the three of them together might make for good sunsets, and (ii) the three of them together definitely make a good dark colour.  Cadmium red, cadmium yellow and titanium white were also  involved later on.

So off I went.  I started with the sky.  I put down loads of water, then added bands, from top to bottom, of blue, red, yellow and red.  It’s easy to remember: just don’t have blue and yellow next to each other as we don’t want green.  At times, the three colours mixed together and I tried using the resulting neutral colour to dab in some clouds but these disappeared at some point.  And I threw on some salt, the results of which are still there.

With one eye on the clock and the promise of steak and chips, I didn’t have time to do much but did add some starting greens to the grassy areas and some dark neutrals to the darkest bits of the rocks.  In both cases, I tried to variegate by having more blue, red and yellow in places.  And, yes, that does mean there was some red within my green.

And then I stopped to head off to the pub.

When I came back, I started on the rocks.  I tried to wet and soften the top edges of the shadows but without any luck, instead adding some semitones above the shadows.  Once the semitones were dry, I went over all the rocks with a mix of all three primaries, which I tried to variegate everywhere.  While doing this tried to use kitchen paper to remove highlights but without much success.  Then I strengthened the greens with more colour and stepped back to review things.

And things weren’t right but I did manage to come up with some actions that not only res used the painting but which took it to a whole new level:

– I put a thin unifying layer of Winsor blue green shade over the whole shy and dabbed it with kitchen paper in places to make it interesting.  Without this, the sky was looking like a number of disconnected bands.

– I added a bit of foreground foliage using my three favourite opaque colours

– I tried adding a unifying neutral glaze over all the rocks, again dabbing out highlights with kitchen paper, but this still didn’t work.  My biggest problem was that the rocks were too dark, not standing out enough against the background.

– and finally (this is genius) I added a thin titanium white glaze wherever I wanted highlights, put some water next to it to soften its lower edges, then brushed upwards over it with kitchen paper to remove most of it.

And that was me done.  I did what I like to do at this stage, which is to prop up the painting, turn my back on it, take a few steps away, then suddenly turn around and see the painting, imagining I’ve never seen it before.  And let me tell you I was jumping up and down like I’d scored a cup final winner.  I’m really pleased with this one.  The sky, the rocks and the eye are all in perfect harmony.  And the top rock looks like an eyebrow.  It’s not even clear at first that the eye is a separate painting taped onto the back.  This one’s a big success and is up for sale.