I’ve been loving a more dramatic, bolder colour palette lately. Beautiful buttery yellows, rich magenta and swathes of rich sky blue. “July Effect” just worked, and though it had caused me to stumble at first, I ran with it and the paint just flowed. It feels Monet-esque, yet at the same time reminds me of the Expressionist works of Kandinsky in Murnau. Perhaps that’s a high bar to aim for, but this painting makes me happy, and gives me confidence.
July Effect
Monet’s Haystacks in Summer
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau Study I
So when I sketched this little gem in paint in my sketchbook, I felt that I was on to a sure thing. I had the perfect sized panel ready: a little larger than the 10 x 15 panels that I’ve been painting, but not too big to be daunting to the somewhat minimal subject matter.
Holyrood Study
I wanted to capture the light, the path through the landscape and up to the sunlit horizon, with the rays of colour in the sky cascading down, bringing the viewer’s eyes back down to the verticals of the trees, and completing the 360 view of the scene. There was a beautiful area of contrast which I felt could make a strong focal point. I had my vision, I had my preparatory studies. I had my colours.
I did what any eager artist would do: I started painting.
For the first few layers, I scrubbed some base tones around, made some very loose, gestural marks. The same process I use for my larger paintings (my smaller panels have a slower, more precise underpainting). I knew I wanted to paint from my memory and from my sketch and ignore my reference photo. I knew the scene well, I’d sat for several cold hours sketching right on that spot.
A soft, muted sky started to form. So far, so good. I started establishing the darks. Then it was time to add more saturation, and work on those focal areas and highest contrasts. So far, so good.
At the end of the first painting day, I noted some adjustments I wanted to make. I needed to redefine some shapes, work on the path and blend the sky. But it still looked quite faithful to the study in my sketchbook.
The more I looked at the sky, the more it didn’t work. So I boldly painted over it.
It was a few days until I could get back to the easel, and I decided to try to tackle the sky again. I got the luminosity I wanted, but the blending wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. It’s not like painting in the sketchbook, I thought.
In hindsight, this should have been the stopping point
Too far?
Things started to unravel as I tried to tackle different areas with different approaches. Blend the sky, don’t blend the sky. Big gestural marks. Finer details. Yellow or green, yellow or green. I pushed up the horizon as I felt the painting was lacking a little depth and distance. It helped, but it meant almost a complete re-paint.
Very scary
It’s never fun to admit you’re struggling, or failing, and I don’t want to write this one off, just yet. It’s a painting close to my heart, but even my almost-three-year-old keeps looking at it, sat on its little easel in the kitchen and says “not ready yet!”.
A huge part of painting are the unseen bits, the bits that don’t make it to galleries, museums of viral Instagram reels. It’s about thinking on your feet, learning from your mistakes, and luckily, learning where you need to grow.
Too many steps away from my original idea
While I’m still not sure if I can rescue this one, it has helped me identify a few areas in my art practice I need to work on. And sometimes, perhaps a painting is best left in the sketchbook!