Before the rain

I always seem to be saying I never have any time to paint – or I’m in the process of ‘getting back into it’. Part of the problem is I’ve always felt painting is much more dependant on mood – you have to be in the right frame of mind to start or it just won’t work. At least that’s how it is with me. So I was pleased to find I was in the right mood today and coincidentally (at last) I also had a free day; totally clear of plans and empty of ‘to dos’.

So I decided to set up a small painting using one of my new canvases; an 8-inch squared ‘deep edge’ canvas. The painting is based on a series of photographs I took at the beginning of January of an open field of grass in front of a farm. The day was divided between rain and sunshine and I tried to illustrate this changeable wintery weather in the painting. In one photograph the sky was quite dark with rain clouds against a bright sunlit farm and field. I’m not sure this is absolutely clear in the painting as it looks quite ‘green and blue’ to me at the moment, when perhaps it should be more ‘green and grey’… so I may have to think about retouching it.

Anyway, I thought I’d put together a little composite of the ‘stages’ this painting went through. It’s quite a simple painting really and I tried to minimise the detail since it’s only small-scale. I’m going to leave it hanging on a wall for a few days so I can catch sight of it during normal day-to-day things. I find this helps me make decisions about whether it ‘works’ or not: whether it needs more work or is in fact ‘finished’.

At last a good day of painting though!