"Cloudbusting", oil on paper.
This is an imaginative piece, with a cloud-dancer and a couple of Kate Bush songs (Cloudbusting and The Big Sky) in mind.
It isn't painted on the page of the sketchbook, but on a small piece of oil-painting paper. I started with the idea of using "lean" paint (thinned with turpentine) but ended up with fatter-than-fat neat titanium white, trowelled on with a knife. Needless to say, it's still too wet to stick in the book. Fortunately, I get the book back at the end.
Update (24/11/14): It seems to be dry enough, so I stuck it in the book this morning.Something learnt: No more palette-knife oils in the sketchbooks!
"Nuthanger Down in the Mist", Graphitint.
Something learnt: White Graphitint has its uses.A Down-to-earth cloud, with trees in it... Based on a photograph, this subject seemed a good match for the subtle colours of Graphitint.
Something learnt: Greaseproof paper is a clumsy solution to the problem of oil pastel in crowded sketchbooks."Head in the Clouds - Daydreaming" (self-portrait), oil pastel (Sennelier Nature set).
A metaphorical interpretation. Oil pastel is great fun to use, allowing broad strokes and fine scratching-back (it can also be dissolved in turpentine, but I didn't do that here). It's not best-suited for small drawings; I think I was pushing the limit here. It also never dries, and remains malleable for - as far as I can tell - ever. Oops.
As I had a drawing opposing it in the sketchbook, I needed to do something about that. I cut a piece of greaseproof paper roughly to size and sellotaped it in as a protective leaf. This worked until I foolishly went and stood in a field on a windy day to make the last sketch, at which point the sketchbook flapped around, the greaseproof paper rolled and folded and ... no damage was actually done. But it could have been, and the sketchbook is only at the beginning of its journey, so I investigated online and discovered that Sennelier make a fixative for oil pastel based on a resin spray. It arrived yesterday and seems to do the job very well.
Ice Cream Castles In the Air, Indian Ink (Derwent Graphik Line Maker pens)
A daydream, a fantasy, and a line from the Joni Mitchell song Both Sides Now, which also happens to be (in part) about clouds. A friend told me it reminded her of Gormenghast, and she is right, although it was unconscious on my part. (I really must read the whole trilogy.)Something learnt: Don't draw legs on distant flying dragons*.
What is Open Studios?
Open Studios is a concept that involves artists inviting the public into their work spaces. This is usually as part of a scheme involving several artists in a geographical area who all open during the same period and whose details are collected together in a freely distribuuted guide. Interested people can then tour the studios, and may even buy some art direct from the artists they are visiting!
I have completed my ten pages, and am looking forward to the first exchange.
It's a song title, but ignore that and there's a lot of scope for interpretation – literal cloud studies, shapes that might be seen in the clouds, things that might be obscured by cloud... fluffy and white, ominous and grey, however the mood (or the weather) takes you.
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Evergreen
Oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm
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