We Will Make Them Give Us Light

After throwing my heart and soul into that last watercolour I wasn’t ready to stop for the day.  I needed to “warm down” by doing something more abstract and just enjoying some colours.  I couldn’t do a big painting as I’ve applied a load of gesso to my main pad and need to leave that to dry.  So I dug out a wirebound pad of 5 by 7 inch watercolour pages.  I bought it in anticipation of maybe heading out at some point for some plein air painting but that’s not going to happen.

This was a Jean Lurssen style abstract landscape.  Look her up on YouTube.  If she ever writes a book, I’m buying it.  She’s a real inspiration.

Anyway, I started with an overcast sky.  I’ve  not done one of these for a while.  Raw sienna first, then dropping in some Payne’s grey with a little bit of quinacridone magenta.  And then for the steep foreground, I went for viridian green and quinacridone magenta.  After getting the orange out of my system in today’s first painting, I wanted to give the viridian a good workout.  And then it was a case of randomly dropping on acrylic inks and encouraging them to run around with granulation medium and a lot of paper tipping.  Finally I added the trees in sepia acrylic ink, drawing them with the pipettes in the bottle lid rather than using a brush.  It was all a pretty relaxing, brainless exercise to help me wind down.

I think it looks good.  The waterfall green ink adds shimmers in places and the sky really seems to be lower than usual, adding a sense of menace.  I may have overdone the trees but I was enjoying them.

The name of the painting is taken from the lyrics to The Trees by Rush in honour of the late, great Neil Peart.  May he rest in peace.

And this one’s for sale if  anybody likes it.