Friday, August 28, 2015

Sea Cumulus

oil on card 25x20cm

My energies this August have really been taken up by trips to Perthshire on family tasks, and I was thinking that I’d have to resort to that old blog stand-by - Window Work. Luckily, I’ve had just enough time to bash out a Sky Study before the end of the month.

It’s based on four or five photos snapped from the train on the way back from Perth the other week. If you sit on the left side of the carriage going south you’ll get grand views across the Firth of Forth after Kirkcaldy, and while crossing the Rail Bridge – I think this view is between Burntisland and Kinghorn. Obviously, if you’re travelling north, you might want to sit on the right-hand side.

It’s all about the Big Cumulus on the right, of course, supported by the lower sunlit clouds on the left. There are some quite interesting things going on in that lower left-hand corner though. In isolation, there’s a nice play between those low bright clouds, the nick in the hill-line, the pale field, and the figure. Within the whole rectangle though, they form a ragged arc around the island on the right, which I quite like. That wasn’t meant originally, but I took it into consideration when I was placing the figure (which also wasn’t meant originally, but I couldn’t let it lie).

So, no bells, whistles, or links to exotic websites this time, just a nice little painting. With a figure on a beach…