Back to the painting after a few days' break. This is another scene from the…
The End Of The Footpath
I took the dog out for a walk this morning and found this prefect site for a painting. It’s at the end of a footpath from the Lower Hartlip Road. The footpath is a bit overgrown in places and, even at the very end where it opens out a bit, it still feels a bit claustrophobic because of all the shadows from the overhead trees. But just beyond that post, you step out into wide open sunny orchards. I wanted to capture the change from dark and closed to bright and open. So it’s a great subject. It’s also a great location, with room to spread out, no disturbances and lots of shade.
I decided on my colour scheme before returning to the footpath. Transparent yellow was a no brainier because of all the greenish yellow light coming through from the orchards. For the other two primaries I decided to go with quinacridone magenta and French ultramarine because a purple cool key can create great contrasts between green and purple. I also used burnt umber (for the first time in ages) to dampen down some of my more vivid colours. As usual, cadmium yellow, cadmium red and titanium white came on at the end to play small roles.
After putting down a rough pencil sketch and spattering on some masking fluid, I painted in an underpainting that included the sky and lots of transparent yellow light showing through the trees. I then painted everything in from the back towards the front, freely mixing my four main colours. Some techniques that are worth mentioning here are:
– dabbing in foliage using quite dry paint and a Terry Harrison Merlin brush
– a lot of charging in of colour in the trees. This is about putting down one colour then, while it’s still wet, dabbing in other colours but making sure these extra colours are quite a bit drier than the paint that’s already down
– throwing salt onto all the trees on the left just as the paint was about to lose its sheen
– after dabbing in foliage behind the trees, wetting the marks and using them to negatively paint the trees
Once I’d got to something that I was happy with (and it took a few applications to get the foreground dark enough to contrast against the light in the background) I added the finishing touches, sweeping in some grasses in cadmium yellow with the Merlin brush and grounding them with some similar sweeps at the bottom in cadmium red. Then I spattered on some cadmium red and cadmium yellow, added a white highlight to the post and rubbed off all the salt and masking fluid. Bang. Job done.
And I’m a bit happier with this than I’ve been with other recent paintings. The contrast that I wanted between light and dark is there. The colours of the tree trunks are great and the salt has added some great textures. And it all hangs together the way a three colour painting should. The thing I’m least happy about is where the foliage in places looks like a set of parallel fuzzy bands.
This one was sold by the wife to one of her mates at Knit & Natter.
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