
6×8 ins: Oil on canvas board
This was an experiment with an Umber wash-in, which is a traditional way to begin an oil painting, though I think how I’ve done it probably isn’t very traditional. But it is very washy. And drippy. There’s a wonderful freedom working this way which is essentially drawing with a brush. The oil paint, thinned with genuine turps, can be pulled and pushed around for quite a long time before it dries. This would be the first layer of a painting, describing the general shapes and values. The next stage would be to paint the scene again on top of this layer again using monochrome values, but with opaque paint. The third stage, when that second layer is dry, is to add colour, and finally the highlights. Oil paint can take days to dry so this is potentially quite a long process.