Every artist has their own unique way of working. In my case the thinking process, the pre-painting element, evolves over months and sometimes years. But once I know what I want to do, the painting part itself is fast and intuitive.
Find inspiration, then sit tight while it brews
I see a landscape I like, take photos, then put it on the back burner while I dream up ways to approach the view in paint. This, along with preparing the canvas, is just as important to me as the painting itself.
Pre-textured canvases give me an interesting surface. I sometimes draw patterns on a raw canvas with 3d craft paints then apply thick globs and smears of house paint to create a texture to underpin the landscape. It helps me suggest the bones of the land beneath the trees and earth, and make reference to the seeds and pollen blowing around in the air.
I give the textured canvas a coat of paint to seal it, unifying the surface. Black, scarlet, orange and pink backgrounds all give me the dramatic contrast I want with the land's natural colours. Sometimes I let them shine through the finished work in carefully-chosen places.
The picture below has a black background. Rather than paint the hedge along the horizon in a dark colour over a white sky, I picked out the gaps between the bushes and branches in white against a black sky, a much more interesting way to describe the drama of the storm.
Wading right in with a fat brush!
I don't bother to draw first. I paint outlines with a brush using broad-based, fluid strokes, often in white. Sometimes I let parts of these lines show through the finished painting, another way to suggest the underlying shapes that make up the view.
Once I've made the basic composition I dive into the painting side, the best bit, the part I get totally lost in. I work rapidly and assuredly, making bold marks, unafraid to take definite decisions with thick impasto as well as delicate watercolour-style elements.
Making colour satisfyingly weird
Colour is my thing. Because I don't want to end up in a rut, I sometimes paint in poor light or weird light. It forces me to leave my usual safety zone and find completely new colour combinations I'd never consciously choose in clear, bright daylight.
Finally felt pens, coloured biro pens, liquid paper, glues and coloured pencils come into play as I add the finishing touches. The image at the top of this post, for example, has a series of faint pencil lines drawn across the sky, speaking to the violent winds and scudding clouds on the day I took the reference photo.
It's finished... or is it? I hang new paintings in plain sight, on the living-dining room walls so I can see them when we eat and relax, in different lights and times of day. If it doesn't already say exactly what I want to say, the solution eventually occurs to me.
In the landscape above I drew a series of brown slashes across the foreground. In the picture below I added a white and orange dot of light to the deep green trees. In both cases a shock of physical pleasure told me I'd done the right thing. The work is ready to be photographed and sold as a print in this store.
So that's how I work. That's what goes on behind the scenes of every landscape print I sell. Is it what you expected, or have I surprised you?
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