In the Studio
While sketches may be done outdoors, ‘en plein air’ , most of the final picture is created in the room at the top of the house where I paint. It is small and south facing ; not ideal, but my own.
I stand at the easel , wielding a big brush about. First, a base layer of colour is chosen, to give the picture an underlying tonal mood or atmosphere. Red or Pink for warmth, blues for coolness, yellow for brightness. And undercoating is also important because paint sticks best to paint.
Then the structure of the picture is laid on. The dark areas, lights, and mid tones. This may be in a monochrome, rather than starting with the palette of the intended final painting. Here is where the landscape starts taking shape.
Standing back from the picture is very important. I try to remember to do so regularly. Only from a distance can one see the whole thing; whether the structure is working at scale, whether the compositional decisions were right. The original sketches form a guide to both structure and composition, but soon the picture on the easel takes on its own life, dictating what comes next.
Sometimes I have started with realistic sketches and ended with quite an abstracted picture, as the painting evolved. Other pictures are expressionist landscapes, I suppose I’d call them, all reflecting the atmospheres of the places that inspired them, such as the hills outside Bath, and the area where I now live and walk — the Wye valley in Herefordshire and the Monnow in Monmouthshire, with their surrounding hills, fields and woods.
And I have my helper, always in the studio with me.
