Work in Progress 4

The approach with this painting is much the same as used in the painting featured in the blog; Work in Progress 3. These are some photos taken as reference material at Saraji.

These photos were taken just before sunrise. The Saraji site operates night and day. I like the composition in this image and how the excavator has its own light source, making the lighting in the whole image a little enigmatic. It is also easy to see the strata of soil, rock and quality black coal.

This images shows the completed ground. I used cadmium and alizarine red, French ultramarine and dioxazine purple thinned with lean medium.

These images show the first additions of opaque colour layers. I have not added any mediums so that the paint remains buttery and pliant. In this way a variety of surfaces can be achieved, from dry-brush, scumbling and dragging to impasto qualities more generously applied with paint knife and bristle brush.

These images show details before glazing.

And now detail after iniitial glazing.

And after final glazing to increase contast and reduce colour variety.

The painting was completed with a dark, stained maranti frame and was lucky enough to win first prize for easel based works at the Emerald art awards, 2015.