Project 9 (subject to change) 22nd August. The up-garden angled landscape.

My aim here is to paint the ‘back’ of the painting, this time going from dark to light as if the image were in such full, bright sunlight that it seems overexposed. There’s some shaping to do with regard to overlaps and overhangs but the basic structure is there. And for anyone interested, assuming anyone might be, I often apply paint using a wide-ish brush with two or three different colours loaded on it then I pull it across and keep twisting it to leave trails of colour like threads across the surface.

I’ve realised that, rather than individualising elements of the vegetation, I’m pulling out the movement of it. I’ve also realised I’m getting through particular paints like a dog through a string of stolen sausages.

23rd August. This card is probably twice the thickness it was and also twice the weight, the amount of medium I trowel onto it!

The little ornamental pear needs lifting now and I should maybe enlarge the leaves to make it clear they’re closer to the viewer than the shrubs. I’m wondering if that top left corner of sky is skewing the perspective.

Here’s where I drowned it in huge, heavy leaves to indicate that they’re closer to the viewer than the other elements. They are, but they’re not that low, that close, or that large.

This intervention did nothing to rectify that but it did succeed in getting me to follow my imagination relating to the bleaching out of a scene by strong sunlight.

This is the first pass; taking out the foliage, blending the shrubs left and right towards the centre, extending the path up between them (that is, in fact, where it goes but I’m less sure about its representation), and making foliage-like shapes with a scrubby old paintbrush in the top third. I’m a lot more comfortable with this but I need to get some shapes right in the middle.

Not quite there. I like that the shrub on the right has taken a starring role with the one on the left as best supporting act. I’m still not keen on the path because it hasn’t gone away, and while I’m eyeing the foliage top-third right, I’m also thinking I should fix the other elements before tinkering with it. It may be quite settled once that’s happened.

24th August.

Exposure.