I chose a photo of a dark landscape with a narrow strip of land at the bottom, pinched a heavy, roiling sky from another, ran it through MotionLeap and added some effects (probably birds, maybe bats), turned that into an MP4 and took a still from it. Then, in my head, I removed the birds.

There will be an overlay reflecting the intrusion of the built environment but I’m not sure what I’ll use yet.

First paint sketch.

Some structure is beginning to emerge now; not quite the right structure but nevertheless! And I’m beginning to notice video elements creeping into my painting technique – visual impacts that have a painterly equivelent and that I’m trying to replicate in this different context.

Taken something of a biblical turn here!

Late-night cloud editing. Recently, I began avoiding wearing my near-vision glasses for painting because it stops me fiddling with detail at the expense of the overall image. It looks as though dispensing with light might be an advantage too!

March 16th and here we are with seems less cloud formation than some kind of dramatic event bottom centre. This, unusually for me, is made using very dilute titanium white on top of the paynes grey/prussian blue base. This all happened late last night so perhaps being half asleep, working in low light and not wearing glasses will be the secret of my success-to-be!

I’m sure there is more to do here but I’m not sure that isn’t my fiddling voice.

Stormy skies

Truth is always stranger than fiction because fiction has to 
Make the unreal just real enough
To keep us reading.

So it is with painting.
Clouds trotting like sheep in a line across the horizon
Would be unbelievable even though you just saw them
Right there
From the bridge.

So I’m learning to paint clouds that are
Unreal enough to look 
Real.

Conboy-Hill, 2024

Darks darkened, lights lightened. This feels more ‘mine’ than a bit of a stab at classical painting. Touch of the el Grecos maybe – high contrast with edges. And I’ve sneaked a tiny sliver of fluorescent orange into the foreground. From a distance, it seems to me there’s more of a sense of movement in the sky from the back (over the low hills) to the front (over our heads). Clouds are very tricky because they’re atmospherically random and humans are inclined towards patterns and regularity, so randomising them is a conscious effort which in itself is skewed towards regularity. Maybe that’s why low light, no glasses, and semi-conscious seems to work for me. Where’s a neuroscientist when you need one?

Ok, I’m calling it. Unlike before, I don’t feel any drive to ‘finish’ it because it feels finished and I can only harm it with more brushwork. The painting does more than I’m aware of putting into it and I’d like to think my dissatisfactions have been reflecting inadequacies of which I was not consciously aware. This is beginning to happen quite often, alongside the deliberate no-fiddling strategies. In addition, the size of the canvas means I’m using whole arm movements to make marks, and increasingly I’m wielding quite a large brush. No real finessing opportunities there. So when I do want to add detail, I really have to make myself uncomfortable with glasses, much smaller brushes, and sometimes even a ruler to get it done. It has to be worth it. That smidgen of fluorescent orange for instance – it’s right there in the middle, narrow as a lightning bolt, and the colour of flame. It’s the only full-on colour in the whole painting and it may, if you’re looking for a story, be the key to it.

Here are the girders again. This time marching across a landscape beneath a turbulent sky.*

I believe I’ve run out of sacrificial canvases so I either go smaller or I invest in some more, and I’m wondering if it’s obligatory now to paint a series of horrors before I slap on the primer and make something decent.

*It wasn’t till I’d named and posted this that I spotted the volcano bottom right!

SCH 2024