Friday 6 April 2018

Escarpment Shadows - Selected for The Rotary Art Spectacular 2018

I received a very welcome email this morning. It was from the organisers of The Rotary Art Spectacular 2018 with the good news that Escarpment Shadows has been selected for this year’s Exhibition. 

Two more paintings Afternoon Light - Drakensberg oil on canvas and Peonies - watercolour on paper were selected for the online exhibition. 

The dramatic mountain range creates strong shadows as the sun strikes the ridges. A palette knife was used to apply paint on to the birch panel. A panel is good when working with a thicker application as there is no movement of the substrate which could cause the paint layers to crack. Scraping paint across the firm surface is also very satisfying.


Escarpment Shadows - oil on panel 410 mm x 610 mm

The process for this painting started with a graphite drawing.


Graphite drawing in Alpha sketchbook 

I then did a line drawing of the mountain range to establish the detail. This initial drawing was enlarged to the proportions of the panel. Transferring the lines was archived by applying a thin layer of oil paint to the reverse of the paper and tracing the lines. I wanted to be able to concentrate on painting without being concerned about getting the drawing accurate. 


First layers - 21st February  
I was not concerned that many of the initial lines are lost when working with a palette knife - it’s freeing to colour outside the lines!


Vigorous palette knife marks were used to capture the foreground and the cloudy sky.

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