Tag: painting

I hope you are all surviving in this current heatwave that is sweeping the UK and the rest of Europe. Woke up to the news that Keir Starmer has resigned as Prime Minister. Quite honestly, don´t know whether that is good or bad. The warm weather has certainly made it harder to paint, or to do anything frankly… but lemonade and icecream are making it slightly more bearable. Yesterday, I purchased a portable AC unit for the first time, which should arrive today… Fingers crossed it does the job….it´s supposed to reach 37 °C this week.

Painted this in 2017 (onto a beachstone I found in Mallorca)

Yes, so regarding painting, after completing my last one, which was an abstract that I talked about in my last post (see below), I had a particular colour come to mind. However, the colour I was thinking of was deeper and more reddish than the colour in the abstract painting which is a little more brownish – and this time I wanted to have a richer burgundy.

Abstract #3

I decided I need to try to make that colour and paint something with it. I wasn´t sure what I wanted to paint though. I started drawing on a small canvas, making a few lines with a ruler, and found myself making a tall, triangular shape in portrait layout, and thought it could have a circle above it. Then, as I was drawing, the idea of a road heading into the setting sun came to me. I then added some cacti, some desert, and some mountains. After a bit of trial and error, I was able to make the burgundy colour that I could see in my mind, and began painting. After doing the first layer of painting, using many different shades of light and dark burgundy, and painting the sun yellow, I was really not sure what other colours I wanted to use. I decided to take a break from it, and start something else.

I knew I wanted to paint something with a small circle or circles in it, for some uknown reason. I also knew that I wanted to paint the circles gold or in some other metallic colour. I started dividing up the small canvas with straight lines going across and then added a large triangle into the middle of the canvas. I then placed a largish circle directly above what was now going to be the pyramid. I decided the circle was going to be the moon and would probably be a light blue, but that the painting needed to include the sun as well. So I added a sun which I placed lower and to the right of the pyramid. However, something was still missing….The small gold circle that I had in mind from the start needed to go in somewhere. I decided to place it floating close to the base of the pyramid and I must say, that is probably my favourite bit of the painting 🙂

´White pyramid´- acrylics on stretched canvas

As I started to paint, I thought it should look like night sky as there was a huge round moon above the pyramid, but that there also needed to be a sunset as the sun was also in the sky and starting to set. As I went along, the colours became somewhat like a rainbow, though more pastel-pinkish in some areas.

The pyramid had to be white with a gold cap and base I thought, as apparently the ancient pyramids were originally encased in white, limestone blocks and had real gold at the very top. Did you know that? It seems that over time, the limestone started to fall off and eventually people started taking it away and using it for all kind of things such as constructing buildings in what is now Cairo.

Anyway, after painting several layers of white onto the pyramid and leaving the blocks outlined in pencil, I thought it needed something more to make it shiny. I remembered I had bought some white/pink pearlescent paint a few months ago, which I had yet to use. I added the paint on top of the white blocks and now there is a really pretty, opalescent shine to the pyramid if viewed under a light. You can see this in the little video on my youtube channel.

So once the pyramid painting was completed, I was not quite ready to go back to the desert one for some reason, and because I had lots of a beautiful green shade that I had made and did not want to waste, I opened up a larger canvas and drew some hills and what I thought was going to be the sea and started painting that with the green paint. Since then, in the last few says, that painting has undergone quite a transformation! I am still working on it from time to time. It´s a largish painting and a bit much to work on in this heat, so I may do more on it once the heatwave passes. Will tell you more about it in the next post.

So yesterday I finally I returned to the desert painting, and after a fair bit of trial and error, I was able to get it looking how I wanted it. Initially, I had added a couple of clouds above the sun which I had painted a bright blue colour. This looked okay, but clashed with the road and the rest of the painting. Also, the desert had areas that looked a bit too mustardy yellow at the bottom, so I changed this to a sort of ochre colour. This looked good with the other colours of the sands and plants, which were light pinks, various greens, and some deeper pinks, but still something was missing!

Furthermore, the clouds had to go, I thought! However, after much experimenting and painting and repainting the sky and mountains a few times, I suddenly found myself painting over the sky and clouds with a deep, rich burgundy and…it worked!

So, I was quite happy with it eventually, as the clouds could stay, but no longer distracting us from the sun and the rest of the painting. I thought maybe the sun needs to be a bit more orangey, though was really not too sure about this. Still, I began to make a sort of yellowy, orange shade, but found myself applying it all over the painting, but not onto the sun! That accidental colour turned out to be just right to bring the whole thing together and I was amazed by how it highlighted and complemented all the other colours in the painting. I added a slightly dark yellow to the outer edges of the sun and voila! the painting was suddenly complete 🙂

´On a dark desert highway´– acrylics on stretched canvas

Now, everytime I look at this painting, I can hear that song by The Eagles – ´Hotel California´ playing in my mind. In particular, the lines,

´On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair. Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air, up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light, my head grew heavy and my sight grew dim, I had stop for the night´.

And with that…I think it is stop and set up the AC unit which has just arrived….it´s the Bush 7K…hmm, let´s see if it´s any good. I´ll let you know in the next post. Til then, enjoy your day and if you like this post and my blog, please like, share, comment and subscribe!

Artwork & Prints

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