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

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so I packed the kiln but am only firing it today

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as always, fingers crossed ….

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

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

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full of geese

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huge drama

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and telegraph/electricity poles

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first the charcoal drawing, which is the key

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to the whole thing

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firstly a very small painting to try things out

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then a bigger one, 81 x 62 cm

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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

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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

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a lot of lovely sparkling light later

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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

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the painting looked like this

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the top and bottom right hand corners needing most attention

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

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

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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

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I started the geese very dark

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and worked into them with this brownish grey

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top left – keeping them fairly vague

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

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

 

 

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