Keeping it up

Keeping up the momentum - back in the studio again today.  Got to keep working with the exhibition coming up.  I thought about doing some oil painting, but I was a bit distracted and in the end it was just acrylics.

I started with some graphite and conte as a warm-up exercise - based on sketches from Drumbuie.

Drumbuie Shore Drawing

This was done by laying down marks with graphite stick, then making marks in white conte, then rubbing out, and then doing this a few times.  I may carry on with this another day.
I carried on with a picture I started on Friday.  It was looking like this when I arrived today.

Skye from Kishorn (emerging)

There was a lot I liked about this picture - for instance, the marks lying under the white acrylic wash seemed to work - it gave a nice watery feel to the shore area.  But I was not happy about the technical quality of the painting, and thought the trees in the middle distance were not working terribly well.  I had only used white acrylic and inks up to this point.  Radical action called for.  I went back in with white acrylic on a roller and added a little acrylic paint colour to the shore and the middle distance.

Skye from Kishorn (emerging)

It looks quite good in the photo, but I didn't think it worked well in reality.  The sea in particular didnt look right.  So I added some more watery acrylic - blue/green.  And it ended up looking like this.

Skye from Kishorn (finished?)

I think this works better as a whole picture and so I stopped at this point.  I went back to the other Kishorn picture - the one featured in my previous blog.  I left it like this on Friday

Applecross from Achintraid (emerging)

And added some additional green, grey, orange and blue. It finished like this

Applecross and Achintraid (finished?)

Is this better or worse?  On Friday I had achieved a sort of stained glass effect which I quite liked, but I thought it looked a bit scrappy when I looked at it today.  To be honest, the paper I had used was not such good quality and the texture of the paper was over-dominant.  Although it was in acrylic, it had a watercolour look to it.  So it looked better in the photo than in reality.  Now, I've added denser colour and focused on that spot where the ridge leads through to the corrie (on the left) and it looks a better finish.  But on reflection I feel the picture has lost something.  It's that old story, as Matt used to tell us - it's important to engage your brain before taking up the paintbrush - I should perhaps have been a little more thoughtful about what I was trying to achieve.  Ah well...back to the drawing board....