Work in progress II

Over the next week or so I will be working on the third in a series of paintings I have produced of Blackford Pond in Edinburgh. In early March 2018 there was some extreme winter weather which froze the pond and covered Blackford Hill, not to mention many other parts of Scotland, in a blanket of snow. Normal activity ground to halt for a couple of days as a result of disruptions to public transport and road closures. This sketch is taken from one of a series of photos that I took at the time.

All done

The finished piece. It has a different feel to the other two in the series, the main features being the trees and the patterns and shapes they create against the hill, rather than the frozen expanse of the pond and the grasses and rushes in the foreground. Reasonably satisfied with the way it has turned out.

I’m heading back to Caringorm (metaphorically speaking) for my next couple of paintings. I am definitely in tree mode at the moment, to the point of obsession.

Making progress

Making slow progress with this, however it is quite a small canvas and so shouldn’t take too long to complete. It is starting to take shape. I have been generous with my use of a palette knife to apply the pigment and also scrape out the surface to create more subtlety in the shaded areas. I think I need to blend some of the tress better into the shrubbery toward the top of the painting to create more of a monochrome quality to the

Working up the detail

I’ve started creating some detail and texture here and defining some of the shapes created by the trees. At this point I’m not quite sure about the direction this is going. It has a different feel to the previous two paintings in this series and I’m not entirely happy with it. Still, it’s early days yet.

Preparing the canvas

Here I have roughly mapped out some of the main elements of the painting. At this point I am still thinking things through, although I do have a rough idea/image in my head of where I want to go with the piece. This stage is very much a part of the creative process, and the unexpected can happen. Sometimes I’ll change direction and see where that takes me and at other times I’ll stick to my original, albeit rough plan. The colour, at the moment is more intense than I am aiming for in the finished piece and, although I quite like this as an image in itself, I’ll tone it down as the work progresses and add more detail.

Making a start

If I haven’t managed to do a drawing in situ, I start the creative process with a sketch from a photograph. This gives me ‘thinking time’ and allows me to play with ideas in relation to colour and form: to move the image on from what the camera has captured to what I see and feel. I also take inspiration from the work of other artists such as Victoria Crowe, especially the sparing use of colour of her winter landscapes. For this painting I will continue to work with the limited palette I have used in the previous two works in this series, employing blues, browns and ochres. I also plan a more textured finish which I will achieve by applying the pigment with a palette knife.