Because some of the painting workshops I’d planned this Spring had to be cancelled, I decided to do a mixed media painting in stages. I used some sketches of an abandoned croft at Lonbain on the Applecross peninsular, Scotland. I often use sketches like this, reworking them into new pieces – one of the reasons I never throw any of them away.
Stage 1.
I began by taping a piece of heavyweight (200gsm) cartridge paper to a board and sketching out a rough outline of the building onto it, marking in walls and a track.
Stage 2.
Next, I washed in a sky. For this I used gouache but at this stage I’m not too fussed about getting the right colour. It’s enough just to put something down. I’m more concerned with tones in these early stages. I usually draw some of the main blue tint of the sky down into the foreground to homogenise the whole thing. For this I used a cerulean blue.
Stage 3.
As with the sky, it’s important just to put a tone down onto the paper, not worrying too much about whether the colour is right or not, as it can always be altered later. I roughly brushed in a yellow ochre with a touch of black added to it. I can never exact about colour as much of the stuff I use from my palette has bits of other colours accidentally mixed with it. Similarly with brushes – my technique involves a lot of scrubbing both on paper and board, so I tend to buy cheap brushes as they don’t tend to last long!
Stage 4.
I began adding some soft pastel into the sky – light grey and white, to tone down the blue which I now thought was too powerful. I scuffed in some green and ochre pastel tones over the foreground and added a few hints of Prussian blue pastel as a foil to the cottage, which I drew in with various grey pastels. Much of the ochre tone of the previous stage was covered up now as I began to suspect that it was a little too bright. As I mentioned earlier, it’s good to just put a colour or a tone down; it can always be altered later.
Stage 5.
I decided to darken some of the areas of the painting to add drama. By doing so I was also adding some composition lines to draw the eye up the page to the cottage. I decided there was too much green in the lower left portion and added some grey areas to harmonise with the hues of the stone cottage and the boulders and crumbled walls. I darkened the path leading up to the building with some burnt umber and Prussian blue. I’m not an advocate of blending pastels too much because the results can be a little too slick and wishy-washy. I like to keep my pastel marks crisp and well-defined. Pastels are a wonderful combination of painting and drawing and I’m happy if my work shows this in some way.
Stage 6.
All that was left to do was to add some details – windows, shadowed areas in mauve, black and Indian red, fence posts and stones and boulders in black pencil. The temptation is to keep adding bits of colour and detail, but part of completing a painting is knowing when to stop and not overwork it. I decided that at this point that it was finished.
Earth Pig Pottery 