Waiting For The Sun - stage 9

After being away for four days I was able to get back to the painting today during which time I finished the rocks in the distance, worked out the transition of colours from the background to the foreground and made a start on the waterfall. I am quite pleased that when you see the painting in the flesh your eyes naturally squint when looking at the sun; this is because this is the lightest part of the picture and is the white of the original canvas, everything else is toned to this point of light. I will probably leave the figure until the end.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 8

Carried on with getting the foreground merging into the background, trying to get a satisfactory transition in the lighting. I am leaving the figure for the moment and concentrating on getting the setting right.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 7

Worked on the rocks and driftwood around the figure and put in some violet into the water today. Hopefully it is now becoming apparent how I want the lighting to work with the sunlit area being the focal point and the figure in the rocks a secondary focal area. I am also showing the original photographic reference to show how I use it as a starting point by expanding, recomposing and relighting to suit the concept that I have in my mind.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 6

Difficult to photograph this today as I had loads of bright sun coming into the studio on the left which has confused the camera's exposure meter. I put more work into the canyon wall and arch and made a start on the foreground at right.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 5

Apart from painting the distant sky and landscape through the arch I spent most of the day working on the canyon wall at right, trying to work out the colours I want. I can see in my mind's eye that the right hand side of the picture is mostly greens to provide a complementary contrast to the yellow orange light coming in from the left, but have had some difficulty in working out the right kind of green that I am happy with.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 4

Made a start today on painting some greens over the background, making sure to keep the glow from the sun in the arch area.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 3

Again I decided to sort out the shapes of rocks etc before proceeding to paint in the other colours although I did make a start on the sky and background. The landscape is loosely (very) based on some photographic reference but really it is mostly imagined so it is important to me to establish where everything is before I paint in the other colours over the top of the very warm underpainting.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 2

I decided to refine the composition by continuing using the tonal underpainting but adding a lot of transparent warm colours like Permanent Orange, Alizarin Crimson and Dioxazine Purple. I got rid of the tree to her left which was bothering me and instead placed a lot of driftwood around. The painting will be based on a red/orange - green/blue complementary colour axis but intend it to be quite colourful so I will be introducing yellows and purple/violets too.

Waiting For The Sun - stage 1

Well here we go at last with a new painting following last week's eye operation, the left eye is still somewhat cloudy but is good enough to make a start on a painting hopefully heading for Illuxcon. I have actually used this title on an earlier painting but it was so unsuccessful I took it off my website so I feel free to use it again (another The Doors reference but as usual absolutely no connection to the album!). A naked Dryad looks towards the rising sun in a landscape with no horizontals or verticals so that I can get as much compositional movement as possible. I am undecided about the tree to her left, I don't want it looking like a snake but quite like the way it breaks up the sweep of the small canyon wall. I've put in another waterfall because I like painting them and want the picture to have a vaguely mythological feel to it and am trying to avoid it looking like a regular Fantasy painting although in many ways it is! This is my usual wash-in with a rag using a mix of Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and turpentine.

Amazing Stories - very nice review by Jane Frank

Jane Frank has just written a very nice post on the Amazing Stories blog/website about me and my work. It's interesting to see an overview by somebody else on what one is trying to do and how one is going about it! Thank you Jane and look forward to seeing you at Illuxcon!

Here is the link:
http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2014/05/artful-collector-now-spotlight-artist-mark-harrison/

Out Of Action

You may have noticed a distinct lack of posts this week, this is due to the fact that I can hardly see at all out of my left eye following an operation for Glaucoma on Monday. For some reason my vision clears quite well in the evening but in the daytime is completely cloudy often with accompanying headache. I have been told that it will take up to a couple of weeks to sort itself out so consequently it is unlikely that I will be showing any new work until my daytime sight is restored.

To Touch The Sky

Loosely (extremely) connected to The Doors track "Not To Touch The Earth" this is another of my Figure-against-Sky paintings that has a song reference in the title...but in no way illustrates it....in any way! A woman runs along a hill, her outstretched arms seemingly holding up a late afternoon cloud in the sky. I tried scumbling versions of complementary yellows on blues to try and get a shimmering of light in the sky. I like this effect of one colour shining through another and will experiment with this over the coming week as I will not be able to paint a normal picture in this time due to an eye operation tomorrow for Glaucoma. Oil on canvas 15 3/4" x 15 3/4". There is a step-by-step progress through this painting on earlier posts on this blog.

To Touch The Sky - stage 5

Painted in a more opaque white in the lower sky in readiness for the yellow glaze when I return to the studio on Sunday.

To Touch The Sky - stage 4

I forgot to mention in the last post that I painted out the landscape at bottom right as it didn't help the composition and somehow took something away from the simple idea of the picture. Today I painted a thicker scumble in the sky, refined the shape of the cloud, roughly put in the figure and put some more work into the foreground.

To Touch The Sky - stage 3

I have now put on the first scumble of semi-opaque Michael Harding Lemon Yellow paint mixed with a lot of Liquin and Lukas Number 5 on the sky. Nice to see the underpainting of blues coming through the Lemon layer. This should completely dry overnight ready for the next layer of more opaque colour.

I Sell A Life Drawing....!

Well there was a turn up for the book, I went into the Sussex County Arts Club last week to pick up my drawing that I had chosen to exhibit and lo and behold, somebody had bought it! This came as a complete surprise as I consider my figure drawing to be my least capable artistic endeavour and had such little expectation of it selling that I hadn't even bothered to photograph or scan it before framing it up. The above photo is the only record I have of it (in the red circle).....but hey, thank you to Mark Ruskin for buying it!  A nice surprise.

To Touch The Sky - stage 2

I have painted the colours that will sit under what I will paint next, scumbles of yellows and oranges. As I was using relatively thick paint I mixed in Liquin and Lukas Number 5 painting mediums - wow that Lukas dries fast!

To Touch The Sky - stage 1

Another of my figure-against-sky paintings, this time set in my favourite local landscape, the Cuckmere Valley although it could be anywhere as it doesn't really matter where it is! A woman walks/runs up a hillside, her arms outstretched seemingly touching the underside of a large backlit cloud, giving the impression that she is holding it up in the sky. This is the usual first stage, a washed in with a rag mixture of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and turpentine.