The importance of a sky!

In the final days of my summer break before starting the new school year, I took myself off to the studio for a few hours today.  On the first day of September I found myself wondering how long it will be before I plug the heater back in for winter.  I love my studio space...but it is so cold in the winter, so I painted today in what I'm sure will be the last last of the summer light...and warmth!

Today my attention was on my St Botolph's painting.  Underpainting nice and dry, I began to add thin glazes of greys, blues and white to give depth.

Using linseed oil to make the colour more transparent
I ensured that the colour of the underpainting was still
visible underneath.

During the Reformation St Botolphs, like many reli-
gious buildings in Britain, was demolished.  The fires
of the Reformation destroyed buildings, purged heretics and swept away centuries of history, art, ceremony and belief.
Therefore the sky in this painting is so important as it is painted in a literal and symbolic sense.

To further reveal the underpainting, I used a cloth to rub into the wet paint - having mixed the paint with linseed oil, the paint comes off almost cleanly, showing the colour beneath.

Here I leave some of the cloth marks still showing, existing almost as a cut away to the colour beneath.

Using a fan brush I can blend the fresh layers of paint into the underpainting beneath to give a more subtle finish.

It is difficult to balance both a sense of serenity (to visit the ruins of the priory it is nothing if not a beautifully quiet and reflective place) with the recognition of the violent destruction that happened here.  That I suppose is the challenge of the whole painting.

To both convey a landscape's present and past in one painting.

I often find in my work, as used by landscape painters past and present;  that sky proves to be a very effective and emotive way of creating calm....but with a wicked sense of foreboading!!

 Like my other work in progress (Balkerne Gate, also in Colchester - which you can see photo's of in previous posts) I am attempting to capture the past, present and future of the landscape - to do this the sky has to be absolutely right on both!

Once I begin work on the painting of the ruins of the priory itself I'm sure that the sky will require more attention.

For today, this is where I left it, more photo's of it's progress to come in the following weeks......

I've been bad!

I cannot believe my last post on here was May!  I know, I know the most successful blogs are those which are updated regularly.  It has been an incredibly busy few months and I still have to buy a canvas to start the piece that has been in the pipeline for months now!

I've also started as a blogger with UK Arts directory so keep in touch with me over there at http://ukartsdirectory.com/category/blog/eve-brinkley-whittington/  I'm doing a regular stint looking at the up's and down's of becoming a professional artist, it's a little less personal than my blog here, bit more discursive but i'm really enjoying working with the team, they're a great bunch who work to promote all of the creative industries here in the UK.

A trip to Istanbul has given me a lot of ideas for a new series of works, I haven't even finished my Essex series yet and with York in the pipeline as well i need to get busy with the paintbrushes.

Open Studio season is also upon us, so if you are local to Essex (the one in the UK not America) and you're not busy on the weekend of the 5th/6th Sept then come and join us to see some fantastic artwork...I'm not just talking about me here either! http://www.colchesteropenstudios.org/ you'll find me in the Artists Directory at the top of the page along with all the other wonderful artists (plug, plug, plug!)

There will be a lot more being posted her in the next couple of months, pictures updates on the new painting, Open Studios pictures and plans of the next series.  So sorry for the blog white noise over the last couple of months, I'll more than make up for it...I promise!