Painting - Landscape (Across River at Low Tide)

Spent the day painting today. Felt it was the right sort of day. So I re-arranged my workspace by moving some of the pottery kit to one side and set up my easel and paint box. One day I might have enough space so I won’t have to do this.

I decided to use some material that I’d put together back in January this year. Most of the reference work is photos that were taken over different days and in different weather conditions. The themes I’ve been working on in my recent paintings are simple landscapes of farmland and views across local marshland and rivers. The emphasis is on very simple colour schemes and a build up of layers of landscape; almost like looking at a textile with bands of different fabric. But the overall aim is for a simple naturalism: it has to look realistic at a glance but without too much concern for detail. If that makes sense.

So I chose a small deep edge canvas (20cm x 20cm) for today’s picture and grabbed a couple of old brushes and just went for it. No preparation besides a couple of lines sketched using a piece of charcoal. I find that the less I prepare, the less I ‘worry’ about it or get caught up in unnecessary detail. And apart from a couple of frustrating moments when I had to wipe off some paint where I’d ‘gone wrong’ it was surprisingly relaxing. Much more relaxing than making pots!

Anyway, in these pictures (as you can probably already guess) you can see a composite of the picture being painted in stages and an image of how the painting stands now (at the top). Still not sure if it’s ‘finished’: it will need some time to ‘settle’ in my mind before I know if I’m happy with it. But a nice relaxing day of painting today, which is good.