Telegraph Sang A Song About The World Outside

OK, the hiatus is definitely over now. I only have three chess games left on the go, one of which is about to finish, so enough of my energy and creativity has been freed up for me to get back to painting. I’m starting off with a scene in Queendown Warren, painted with oil pastels.

As usual, I worked from the back to the front, putting on whatever colours felt right and smoothing them out. Today, most of that smoothing was done using polystyrene packing chips. As well as keeping my hands cleaner, I think the effect is better. I also used colour shapers in places, although this is only really evident in the clouds. I’ve scratched in a few grasses with a craft knife. At one point I tried scratching out rocks and bigger trees but didn’t like these, so smoothed them out and added more layers of colour. It took me a long time to get to a bottom right triangle that I was happy with but I eventually called it a day.

It’s a perfectly acceptable painting and is going up for sale, with the price to be found here. I like the trees in the bottom left and the top couple of rows of distant trees. That bottom right triangle looks a bit muddy after adding so many layers but that might just be me. And I’ve identified two things I need to start doing differently with oil pastels. I need to introduce more texture, at least around the centre of interest: stop smoothing out every square inch. And second, I want to see more warm colours. More oranges, yellows, reds and purples, just like I’ve been doing in my soft pastel paintings. This one’s very green, brown and representative.