Mail Box - stage 3

Second colour pass on the sky, just need a couple of hours tomorrow to finish it and then I will move on to the landscape. 

Mail Box - stage 2

A funny day yesterday, I just couldn't envisage in my mind what I was going to do with this picture and felt kind of catatonic so thank God I left it alone and resolved to start it today instead. Always a good idea to leave a painting alone if you don't know what you are doing!
 As usual over my breakfast coffee this morning I began to reconnect with what I wanted to do with "Mail Box" in terms of colour and lighting so I was able to get on with the first colour pass on the sky... except that once I had bashed in some colour I liked the orange against the blue and went with that instead! I was originally going to stick to the colours I used in my last painting....
Plenty of work left on the sky to get it right. The colours I used were: Phthalocyanine Turquoise, Ultramarine Blue, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Orange, Prussian Blue, Warm Light Yellow and Zinc White - all Michael Harding paints.

Mail Box - stage 1

I'm going back to the theme of signs of human intervention within vast natural landscapes, this one being a mail box by the road in the boondocks of New Mexico. There is a path running from the left to some unknown shack out of the picture at right. These pictures are kind of bittersweet in that somebody is struggling against nature to survive in such an environment somewhat made more threatening by the approaching (?) storm... on the other hand it is kind of a celebration of human beings being able to do this in the first place... another in my The Big Sky series of paintings.
This is the tonal underpainting stage and was first "drawn" up with a small bristle brush using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin. Then when it was dry enough the tone was put in with a rag using the same paint mix.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".

The Great Wall

Another painting located in Arches National Park in Utah where there is this line of mesas and buttes called The Great Wall with a lot of them having these flat green areas on their sides where something (glaciers?) has worn away the sides to look like this. Can't see how it could be wind or water that could have done this...
There have been some fantastic towering cumulus clouds inland from where I live in Southern England recently and these gave me the idea for this picture. I decided to have an area in the distance in sunlight the rest was to be in shadow to emphasise the whiteness of the clouds. 
This is of course another in my The Great Sky series.
Oil on linen 30" x 20"
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.

The Great Wall - stage 5

Painted the mid ground mesa today. All the mesas and buttes in this area have quite a distinctive feature to them, it looks like Nature has taken a giant sander and neatly sanded away the whole side of the mesa or it looks like something huge and green has neatly rubbed away the side leaving a green colour on all the flattened surface planes. I need to find out how this happened...
Anyway I stopped here today and leaving it alone until tomorrow as I might overpaint it too much and feel I need to proceed with caution so that I get the tones and colours right. So as usual I will have a look at it in the cold light of tomorrow over my breakfast coffee and see if it's OK so far...
New colour being used is Oxide of Chromium in addition to the colour mixes already in use.

The Great Wall - stage 4

Finished the sky and have gone on to rough in the landscape. As can now be seen the distant mesa is catching some sunlight, everything else is in shadow; I am taking this bit slowly as I need to get the colour and tone right on the nearer mesa so I stopped where I am today and will have good look at it tomorrow morning to make the final decisions. I ran an Ultramarine Violet glaze over the foreground as I want to separate it from the redder sandstone mesa in the middle distance.

The Great Wall - stage 3

Finished the sky today barring a few tweaks later on. I also gave the mid ground mesa a thin glaze of the Burnt Sienna/Winsor Violet mix to darken it as well as bringing out some of the structure ready for tomorrow's session. This mesa and the foreground landscape will be in shadow with some warm low sunlight hitting the mesa in the distance. The whole painting has been composed using The Rule Of Thirds which I use a lot.

The Great Wall - stage 2

One more day left to finish the sky, it's taking a while as it covers a quite large area of the picture. Normally I like to get in the sky in one session...
Colours used so far: Phthalocyanine Blue, Phthalo Green, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Orange, Warm Light Yellow, Naples Yellow Reddish Extra and Zinc White.

The Great Wall - stage 1

Another in my The Big Sky series this is a location in the Arches National Park in Utah called... The Great Wall. There have been some fantastic towering cumulus clouds recently where I live in Southern England and this gave me the idea for this picture. I am going to contrast the white of the towering clouds against the landscape and mesa in shadow although I am going to have the far mesa near the horizon in sunlight, at least that is the idea so far, I might change my mind tomorrow...
This is the tonal underpainting stage in which I used a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet mostly applied with a rag apart from the initial "drawing" up stage when I used a small bristle brush.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".

Elen sold

A painting that I took to IX in 2017 has just sold through Artfinder. This is the first sale that I have made since the lockdown and fortunately the timber merchants I use is now open again so I can get the plywood that I use for the box cut to size as normal. I did recently load up a lot of paintings onto the Artfinder site and looks like it was worth the effort (it took a few days to upload them all) as this was one of the new ones. 
Oil on linen 20" x 30".

Rest Stop

As I do more more paintings in my The Big Sky series I am warming to this idea of choosing locations that show Man's efforts to live in these remote and often inhospitable places. Either they can be where man's interjections into the landscape are in some way successful like here or they show man's failure to make a go of it either for commercial/business reasons or the environmental conditions were too harsh. In this case in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico on Highway 60 is this rest stop where drivers can pull over and eat their lunch etc in the shade within the vast deserted landscape. 
I am getting more and more interested in trying to get across these vast spaces with little touches of man's presence within them always under the Big Sky. I am trying to make these places look beautiful in some way whilst retaining the often ordinariness of the location, kind of a hybrid of the Hudson River School and Edward Hopper!
At the composition stage I always try and introduce/find diagonals in a landscape as they add movement and dynamism to what is a static and potentially boring scene. I only use verticals and horizontals if I want a sense of peace and stillness. In this picture the diagonal comes from the line that connects the bush in the left corner to the red waste bin to the rest stop itself and finally the small isolated tree on the right near the horizon - I also emphasised the diagonal more by using the lighter strip of the path from the bin to the shelter to show up more against the ground around it.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including what colours I used in previous posts on this blog.

Rest Stop - stage 5

Nearly finished the sky and have now roughed in some colour into the landscape. Using colours like, Naples Yellow, Yellow Lake Deep, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange, Brilliant Pink, Permanent Sap Green and a colour by Old Holland called Naples Yellow Reddish Extra (!). Still basing everything around a yellow/violet complementary.
Probably won't post any more on this until the finish....

Rest Stop - stage 4

Still not quite finished the sky so I got it ready to finish tomorrow after it drying overnight and also painted in some more of the Burnt Sienna/Winsor Violet mix over the foreground.
I always try and introduce/find diagonals in landscapes as they add movement and dynamism to what is essentially a static and potentially boring scene. In this picture the diagonal comes from the line that connects the bush in the left corner to the waste bin to the rest stop itself and finally to the small isolated tree on the right neat the horizon. It doesn't have to be a drawn/painted line, in this case it's the way the different elements connect.

Rest Stop - stage 3

The first colour pass on the sky, I would normally like to get the whole pass done in one session but this was not possible due to the area to be covered. Maybe it's just as well as it means I can look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow and see if it's going the way I want it to. The picture is based on a yellow/violet complementary and was conceived with the sky being soft and subtle so that the foreground really stands out. Colours used were: Ultramarine Blue, Ultramarine Violet, Permanent Orange, Warm Light Yellow, Lemon Yellow and Zinc White - all Michael Harding.
As is my current method of working I use transparent colours for the sky and clouds, the only exception here being Warm Light Yellow.

Rest Stop - stage 2

I chose which sky I wanted to do over my breakfast coffee this morning and the painted in the tonal underpainting using the same colour mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag. Decided on a dark sky above the horizon with the landscape picking up a low afternoon sun.

Rest Stop - stage 1

As I do more paintings in my The Big Sky series I am warming to this idea of choosing locations where there are signs of Man's efforts to live in these remote and often inhospitable places, sometimes one's that have failed sometimes not. In this case in the middle of nowhere on Highway 60 in New Mexico there is this Rest Stop where somebody can pull over and eat their lunch etc in the shade within a vast deserted landscape. I am interested in trying to get across these vast spaces by use of the sky above them allied to distant horizons all lit in such a way that makes a very ordinary place become somehow beautiful... kind of a hybrid of the Hudson River School and Edward Hopper!
This is the "drawing" up stage using a small bristle brush and a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin. Tomorrow I will do the tonal underpainting when I have made my final decision about what kind of sky and colours it's going to be over my breakfast coffee.

Crossing

I wanted to get across the loneliness and isolation of a railroad crossing in New Mexico and decided on a dusk scene with the lightest part of the sky visually at the end of the railway tracks as they near the horizon. Although it is dusk I didn't want it to be too dark so I proceeded quite cautiously using glazes mainly of Ultramarine Violet on the landscape until I reached the right tonality for the sense of distance to work. I based the composition around The Rule of Thirds wanting a quite strong and dynamic design using the diagonals of the railway tracks etc but tempered by a soft and melancholy light. It is based around a yellow/violet colour complementary, the colours I used can be found in earlier posts of the painting on this blog.
I think I will develop this theme of signs of man on the landscape kind of left abandoned amidst these vast landscapes of the South West. I am now learning to slow down my bull in a china shop way of starting another painting immediately and am discovering that if I hold off for a day or two it gives the idea a chance to be examined in my head and refined or abandoned etc. It hopefully minimises the chance of painting a dud because it hadn't been thought through properly earlier on.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".
There is a step-by-step progress though this painting in previous posts on this blog.