TOR PICTURE

13 03 04.   Tor picture, as yet un-named, 164x131cms oil on canvas. The trees so brutally pollarded have a first world war trench feeling, but set against a Magritte sky, the atmosphere changes. the trees are shaped like Rodin's Balzac. I started on February 27th thinking about the palette to use and mixing some colours.  In daylight things have changed.  I have decided to use cobalt blue down to pthalo blue in the sky, and ultramarine in the river water:  the mauve in the cloud to be of cobalt and vermillion, following the Sargent pattern of his flesh tints – no alizarin or ultramarine on flesh, and for this none in the sky. Not of course, that this is flesh, but this way the orangey white (vermillion and cadmium lemon) sing more.   Works in the sketch.  The rest to be using alizarin, lemon yellow, ultramarine and vermillion.  No black this time.

GODNEY MONOLITHS

The Bateman Feeding Circle

On an early morning when the sun was burning off the mist, this cattle feeding circle loomed out at me, steaming, making me think of city gas containers. This is the fourth painting in my series for my MA exhibition later this year.











Phil's Digger


When I walk past this abandoned digger, I think of the generations of peat diggers, and the labour in the diggings that has occurred round here for at least 2000years. I shall make smaller paintings of 'monoliths', things I find iconic in the area, paintings measuring120x100cms, and the larger paintings, those 164x130cms to be landscapes