Lonesome

 This one follows on from "Cold Front" where there is a desolate landscape with a dramatic sky that nobody sees as there is nobody around to this one wherein there is another desolate high desert landscape but this time there is an indication of human presence. A snow covered track in the foreground leads to a distant solitary light suggesting that somewhere out there is somebody's home hence the title "Lonesome" which occurred to me the moment I conceived the idea for the painting and never found a reason to change it. I was going to make the sky more dramatic and threatening but I thought it would be better to have a more lyrical feeling to the picture that is set at dusk, my favourite time of day. I was also tempted to put in some warmer colour in the sky near the horizon but again I decided against it so that it would not distract the eye away from the single point of warm light which is actually the whole point of the painting, no pun intended!

This is another of my paintings which could be in either my Roadside America or The Big Sky series. Oil on linen 22" x 16".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.

Lonesome - stage 4

 Used a darker mix of the previous colours for the clouds and darkened the landscape with the Permanent Sap Green/Winsor Violet mix. The single tiny light near the horizon can now be more clearly seen.

Lonesome - stage 3

 I have roughed in the clouds and added a bit of yellow to the sky nearer to the horizon before going over the landscape with a transparent mix of Permanent Sap Green and Winsor Violet. The single distant light can now be clearly seen on the horizon to the right of centre.

I never use black btw, I always prefer to mix a very dark colour out of various paints so that I can get a warm or cold dark (black)  depending on the colour scheme I am using at the time. This "black" was made up of Permanent Sap Green and Winsor Violet.

Other colours used were: Ultramarine Blue. Prussian Blue, Kings Blue Light, Pale Violet, Permanent Orange, Lemon Yellow, Zinc White and Warm White.

Lonesome - stage 2

 Painted a second layer of the Burnt Sienna/Winsor Violet over the landscape and painted a darker gradated blue over the sky in readiness for tomorrow when I start on the clouds.

Lonesome - stage 1

 

This one follows on directly from "Cold Front"; another largely flat horizon, a relatively desolate landscape somewhere in New Mexico with in this case a solitary distant light near the horizon implying somebody living in a house in pretty much the middle of nowhere. At the moment I am thinking of having the landscape with a dusting of snow again but maybe I will change my mind as I go on... This one differs to "Cold Front" in that there is the indication of somebody actually seeing the glorious sky in this one whereas in "Cold Front" there is more a sense of melancholy as there is nobody there to see the beautiful natural landscape and sky.

"Lonesome" just popped into my head for the title and am sticking with it unless something better suggests itself.

This stage is the tonal underpainting for the landscape using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and the basic background colour for the sky using a mix of Kings Blue Light, Permanent Orange, Lemon Yellow and Zinc White.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

Cold Front

 I seem to be in a phase of painting vast spaces with flat horizons at the moment so here's another one and indeed the next one too as this painting has gave me an idea for another. The location is in New Mexico and the sky is a combination of a memory and a bad photograph taken from a train on my way back from London late on a Winter afternoon recently. It seems from a bit of research that it was a cold front passing overhead hence the title of the painting. I decided to have some snow on the ground for this one as it does snow in New Mexico in the Winter and I felt it would be a nice change from my recent regular desert landscapes.

This is another in my Roadside America/The Big Sky series of paintings in which I feel that I am developing a "look" i.e. a dark mainly monochrome landscape using a lot of transparent paint set against a clean but dramatic sky. I actually used to paint this way over forty years ago and it has taken this long to realise what I was doing so that I can now develop it in a more rational and directed way!

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

There is a short step-by-step progress including the colours I used through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Cold Front - stage 3

 Getting it nearer to what I want, hoping to finish the sky tomorrow before painting in the snow on the landscape. The clouds are too flat at the moment and have no depth - hopefully fixed tomorrow...