Sunset over Goathland

Many years back I visited the National Gallery in London and checked out the Turners. It struck me at the time that my appreciation of art had in fact been replaced by a technical appraisal. I now see paintings in a completely different way.... but don't get me wrong J. W. M. Turner was a true master.

The paintings on show at the time included the Fighting Temeraire which had a similar sky to this one. It was a shame to see that they were all terribly faded, it would have been amazing to see them as they were when he had just painted them.

The other thing that struck me was that Mr Turner had painted all the skies on show in a similar way . He had a sky formula.

I was a little disappointed but also found it very liberating in that I was now allowed to construct paintings rather than slavishly trying to represent what I'd seen. If it was OK for the great Mr Turner then surely it was OK for me.

Beech tree completed...I think

I think this is just about finished, I'll let it hang around for a bit just in case I feel the need to tweak some more. 

 GREEN

 Last week I sold two large paintings including my last spring woodland scene, so I decided that I'd revisit by favourite Beech tree in Grosmont woods. I love trying to capture the vibrancy of the new spring growth especially when it's cold and grey outside. Over the last couple of weeks I've been practicing on small pieces in preparation for this one.

So this would be a good time to talk about greens. Green should just be blue mixed with yellow as we all learnt in primary (junior) school. However I've spent the day throwing all kinds of colours into the mix, including Prussian blue, pthalo blue, violet, mauve blue, burnt sienna, lemon yellow, yellow ochre, cadmium orange, cadmium yellow and Winsor green (pthalo green).

There are many ways of mixing effective greens and sometimes it is fun to allow yourself to run out of your main colours so that you are forced to get inventive. Currently I have no French ultra marine.I like to concentrate on warming the sunlit colours and keeping the shadows dark and cool. It's very tempting to get the tube of black out...but black is for wimps and doesn't blend so well. The hardest part is keeping the whites and yellows clean.

My intention when I set off was to use a large quantity of purple in the distance and shadows so that hopefully when it came to putting in the very yellowy greens of the sunlit areas the would stand out.

My distant colours ended up being a mix of Prussian blue, Winsor violet and burnt sienna or yellow ochre. Then to develop the shadows I started introducing pthalo green but cooled right down with Prussian blue and pthalo blue.

As I started moving into the sunlit areas I started mixing burnt sienna into the pthalo green which gives a gorgeous colour with real depth. For the very sunlight exposed areas I used white with small amounts of lemon and Winsor yellow. I then blended the yellows into the warm greens to get a nice transition.

The picture is now basically finished, tomorrow I will spend a few hours tweaking it but I doubt it will change anything significantly. I'm sat here with a brain like mush but hopefully the boy done good.

For a much simpler explanation of the way I tackle greens try this http://chrisgeall.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/a-lesson-on-green-i-felt-unhappy-with.html

Canvas and Board blocks

When I first started out painting in oil I actually started big i.e. 5ft (1.5m ) wide and 20" (.5m) deep. I used to buy in a large roll of canvas and stretch it onto pine from the local builders merchant. The biggest problem with that was the quality of the wood, kiln dried pine warps.

To get round this I started buying seasoned tulip wood and I'd cut it to size using a cheap bench saw. Tulip wood is from the U.S. and is used by cabinet makers because of its stability. 

Eventually I gave in and started buying ready made canvases from a company called Harris Moore who also use Tulip wood. It is expensive but at least I get the peace of mind that I'm not going to see a great string of unhappy customers  complaining about bent pictures.

I still stretch medium sized canvases but buy in composite pine stretcher bars from Lion Picture Framing Supplies.

This is my Morso guillotine, I bought it second hand a long time ago. I can't sing the praises of this machine highly enough and if you get the chance to pick one up secondhand do so. this one was bought from a contract picture framers and had seen many years of abuse but it still keeps on going.

It allows you to cut a 45 degree angle to an accurate length and make making frames a doddle.

For small pictures I paint on MDF, I used to use canvas but the calluses aren't worth it. I make up a pine frame and the glue on a sheet of MDF. I'm very fortunate to have a friendly joiner who cuts up sheets of MDF for me into the require sizes 

 I use these little blocks because they fit nicely into a tray frame. I've found over the years that a large picture generally doesn't need a frame which is fortunate since making large frames is an art in itself, but smaller picture do. My work is very textured and putting a frame over the top of it just doesn't work. The moulding for this comes as bare ( unstained ) Ash from a company in London called Rose and Hollis.

Whitby Abbey

Whitby abbey in soft evening light.

I dug this one out from the archive and I'm quite taken with the lighting.

Waterfall below the bridge in Doctor's wood, Grosmont

I was just looking back through last years photo's and this one jumped out at me so I thought I'd share it.

Longniddry power station with Edinburgh's Arthurs Seat in the background

This is a commission of the now demolished Longniddry power station just outside Edinburgh. I have fond memories of windsurfing and beach parties in the area when I was a student. 

I tried to do a video of the process but hit problems getting my Android phone to talk to my Mac, I'll try again next week with my Nikon.