Obscured By Cloud

This is the first in a series of smaller paintings that will be themed around spaceships and clouds. I haven't done any S/F pictures for years, in fact right back to when I illustrated book jackets up to 2005, yet I seem to be on a roll of them at the moment. I like the idea of all of us living our little lives while above us spacecraft from other worlds are visiting us (and maybe have been doing so for some time). Whether they are hiding from us as they don't want to scare such primitive civilisations as ourselves or are there to be seen by those that look up to the sky...who knows. All of this series will show normal human activity carrying on while in the sky spacecraft float above us, watching us slowly self destruct as our environment falls apart. The idea that we are the only intelligent life in the Universe is clearly preposterous and it is inevitable that beings from other planets will come into contact with us. Science is forever changing and developing and the distances between us and their homes may be vast but who is to say that in twenty years from now a viable way of space travel will be discovered even by us. A civilisation maybe only a thousand years ahead of us which is nothing in terms of the age of planets would easily be way way ahead of us in terms of technology. They may want to leave us alone though as we are crazy, primitive and on the road to self destruction!
I will be bringing a number of these smaller paintings to IX in October.
The picture is basically composed using The Rule Of Thirds and is based around a Red/Orange - Green/Blue complementary axis using mixes of  Phthalocyanine Blue, Permanent Orange, Zinc White, Warm White, Lemon Yellow and Permanent Sap Green - all Michael Harding paints.
Oil on linen 16" x 12".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.