Finding an outside subject in howling wind rain and hailstone is not terribly easy. Sitting in the car looking at a landscape has its problems too, not least the fact that someone will invariably park in front of you obscuring your view…having picked the old bridge over the river, far away from town, I parked next to it and started a water-colour …only for a lorry to come and park right in front of me!
Anyhow, back to the Lancashire mills. I have a fascination with the hills of Colne with their “balanced” houses and mills (which are rapidly disappearing) so I parked my car close to one of the mills. The fascination in this case was with the contrast between the cream (if dark tainted mill) and the blue house (with lighted windows) which sat beyond an area of brown red grass which was cordoned off by barbed wire. There was feeling of desolation and neglect whilst looking at this semi run down mill on a steep hill. At the time there were no cars or lorries parked blocking the view but the car windows steamed up! Oh for Arles and the weather and light of the South of France.
I drew the houses at the side of the mill first wanting to take their colours and the foreground grass into a form of abstraction, but then became more interested in the mill and the perspective, so did some drawing and water-colour studies to look at perspective and colour. I then played with the blending of the colours to try to give grim Lancashire some colour. I had thought of converting the whole to blocks of colour in which there was a dominance of bright blue and red in the one area (around the golden section).
I finally decided to keep the mill and its houses as readable images but to use colour and texture to produce a warmer environment. I did not want to fall into my usual trap of primary colours so mixed quite a lot of white in with the colours. For texture I decide to revert to acrylic and laid acrylic and then oil and the acrylic and “cleaned” them into each other to produce a repulsion of water and oil. The acrylics lifted the bright intensity of the colours and I was pleased I had chosen to use them.
I wanted to contrast the colour with a slightly grim, modern version of the mill worker and chose a hooded individual battling up the hill, This having been placed at the angle of the mill produced compositional imbalance and so I added a second person at the golden section further up the hill.
“The Mill”
The houses which took my attention initially, beyond the russet dry grass, have developed character in the final image. The manner in which the windows and doors (and less so on the mill itself ) have been placed give them facial expression which is amusing and looking with a slight homeliness and curiosity at the figure on the hill.
The sky was painted in mixtures of acrylic and oil and has colours reflecting the foreground. The foreground road reflects the colours of the mill and the red area of grass as well as picking up some of the blues and greens of the distant houses and the windows of the mill. The road was painted so as to give the impression of cobbles, although they no longer exist in this street, I have made both drawing and photographic studies of cobbles in the past.
The perspective and bright front of the mill contrasting against its darker side give a certain degree of drama.
I like the final picture but am a little unsure of the figure, its form and its positioning however I am very aware that there is too little thought going into my paintings as I seem to be rushing through the exercises…….but as they are learning exercises I assume they need not be worked on too well.
playing with creativity 