The Tryst

I had another go at a sky painting in soft pastels today but I’m already veering off the beaten path by going for a cloud formation that looks like a naked woman. Today’s model is AnaIv. It’s her fourth appearance here and she’s never let me down. The idea for this painting came to me on one of my walks while I was thinking about whether I should use pastels from my portrait set to add interesting colours to clouds. It’s not that big a step from painting something flesh colours to introducing some ambiguity and making that something look like a figure.

I followed Sandra Orme‘s five step process again for the sky. I had the book open next to me throughout the painting but started it deviate from her process a couple of times, so my own style is starting to come through already. I had great fun painting that biggest cloud, treading that thin line between a cloud and a figure and keeping the ambiguity. All the colours in the biggest cloud were also introduced into the other clouds to make it clear that the big cloud was really a cloud.

Once I was happy with the sky, I quickly added in a foreground based on a view of Queendown Warren. So this one can be added to my reserve pile of paintings to display at the Rose & Crown. The of the painting comes from an Algernon Blackwood short story. There were some tempting Hendrix track names but I thought this one deserved a bit of mystery in the name, so went for Blackwood.

I’m happy with this one today. I think I’ve successfully managed to find that middle ground between cloud and figure. I thought the foreground might be the weakest element of the painting but I’m looking at it now from the other end of the studio without my glasses on and it looks perfectly fine. The two trees on the left balance the “head” of the cloud so well. And once again I’ve achieved that great complementary balance between green and red. This one’s up for sale.

Weird shaped clouds might become a thing. Which means I might have to give big Sam Allardyce another go.