Sunglasses required for this first paint sketch! I’m laying down the light first here using pouring paint and inks for their transparency and luminosity so it’s massively vibrant! The aim is to build up the layers of foliage on this background which should both shape and inform the painting’s development.

The scene is a local footpath that runs slightly uphill and over which the trees and shrubs fold to enclose the space. ‘Time tunnel’ was my mother’s name for it.

This is a wash of titanium white to mute the first layer of colours. Normally, I could rely on this to be relatively workable for a short while but the temperature in the studio is over 30C so it practically dried as the brush moved on!

But you work with what you have and this is the next layer – darker foliage and pathway definition.

Here’s a subsequent layer which follows on from the application of white/yellow patches where the light falls and where red is the colour generated by the app I applied to the photo. Transparent paint is alive when it has a bright base, less so if applied onto darker colours where it subtly modifies them.

This feels a bit like theatre – each layer setting the scene for the next and playing its own part even when it’s mostly hidden by subsequent layers. Disturbingly, it reminds me of some blouses I see on social media and I need to steer away from that!

1st August.

Apart from the end of the tunnel, which is actually the continuation of the path into bright sunlight, I think I may have reached the point I should have stopped at had I gone any further. I think the chaos of the foliage is represented, as are the patches of light on the path, and the residual splashes of red from the app-enhanced photo. In this shot, I can see the path I just walked today but also feel it in a more surrealistic and slightly magical way. And it’s moving; all of it is moving.

As always, I could do with a better photo but the light is as the light is!

https://youtube.com/shorts/alLyiRuMF34

SCH 2024