I started a new painting which is not unusual for me; anyway as with Niggle and his Tree this is perhaps a bit too large for me and just a bit beyond my current skill level. Yesterday I mounted the canvases on the easel (using my patented canvas holding easel attachment) and then started on the sky which went fairly fast – which is not normal for me, painting a sky in oils can be a trial which I normally have to build myself up to but this time it went without incident.
So this morning I went back to the easel to start on the background hills, I had one small reference photograph with me but it was not doing much for me if that makes sense. Put it this way, I have quite a large stock of images which should cover quite a few varieties of landscape but nothing felt right for this painting. The answer of course was to squirt out some paint and just wing it, the first colour on looked dark and rather foreboding – perhaps I should have planned something first, but anyway I decided to see what happened (it’s only a couple of huge canvases after all). As I started adding the second colour something started to click in my head, for what felt like the briefest of moments I was lost in the painting and when I stopped it was done…. well the background at least is done. The foreground will at least need some more thought before I step up to the easel again.
Yay! Don’t you love it when that happens? I live for moments like that!