White Calf

oil on papered canvas 25x31cm

This started off as an exercise in trying to simplify the trees in a wood, and I added the white calf to provide a bit of tension – I liked the paleness in the gloom.

The simplification really was quite simple – draw the trees in turn from the foreground to the distance until the space gets too cluttered, and grade the focus. Make it sharper in front and blurrier towards the back.

The calf went quite well, with one minor hiccough. I wanted the light on it to be greenish, but that made it look a bit radioactive, and once I’d thought that, I couldn’t unthink it. I solved this by conjuring up the thin white light (zinc white + drier) coming from the front. This emphasized the rhyme between the legs and the dark upward forks of the trees, so that was me quite happy.

Once the painting was finished, looking at the palette made me realise how far I’ve come in handling greens. Most of them here are very soft, and were made with various blue/yellow mixes – e.g. Ultramarine, Prussian, and Chrome hue, Yellow Ochre etc – and modified with touches of violet or burnt umber. The only ‘tube’ greens I’ve used are Chrome green (it’s fairly gentle and the opacity is great for making corrections), and Winsor & Newton’s Olive Green (a mix of Lampblack and transparent Isoindolinone yellow pigment) - very useful indeed as a shader and mixed here with Ultramarine Violet to make a soft black.

I should point out that there is no Pthalo green here at all. There are all sorts of tube greens sold out there - Permanent, Emerald, Prussian, Winsor, even the authentic-sounding Hooker’s and Sap – and most of them are phthalocyanine based. No doubt they are useful for something (?), but within a subtle palette they’re the Assyrian coming down like the wolf on the fold. And afterwards, you’ll find they’ve stained your brushes.

So, a delicate little picture, with a White Calf in a wood. Don’t get lost…