geese and skies and paint

very slowly, this week I have got around to firing some of this new work. the wind was in the wrong direction all week – the kiln chimney duct comes out sideways from the shed’s gable end and the east wind blows straight down it, putting the flame out, or sending it underneath the kiln

so I packed the kiln but am only firing it today

as always, fingers crossed ….

I’m using the painterly chun glaze over slip and oxides again

and while the pots were out of the shed I’ve spent a couple of days painting, inspired by skies

full of geese

huge drama

and telegraph/electricity poles

first the charcoal drawing, which is the key

to the whole thing

firstly a very small painting to try things out

then a bigger one, 81 x 62 cm

which ended up like this last night; I wanted to introduce more colour than in the small one, so there’s cobalt blue, burnt sienna, and then alazarin crimson, ultramarine and burnt umber in various mixtures

up early this morning to light the kiln at 5.30 am, the clouds had parted like curtains and there were all the stars, and not a breath of wind

a lot of lovely sparkling light later

the kiln was going a bit slowly, but the painting cantered on, by lunch time I had done most of it, and broken my palette knife

the painting looked like this

the top and bottom right hand corners needing most attention

top right – I have a huge palette knife I used for mixing oil with pigment back when I did enormous oil paintings

bottom right – which was in fact interesting, quite different to work with –

the finished painting – and I found mark-making with it and the brush and the brush handle point worked well,  I  put paint on with the palette knife and them work into it with both ends of the brush

I started the geese very dark

and worked into them with this brownish grey

top left – keeping them fairly vague

the last thing I wanted was a sub-Peter Scott.

now I must get a couple of palette knives and some more plywood. I have a nice linen canvas to work on tomorrow though.