Michael Pearce

No rusty reds yet, but there are three greens over the grey, making a pretty layer of leaves which will work out very nicely when I define them a bit with some dark brown and a little detail.

The colour is a bit off in the bigger picture – the orange of the iron oxide is jumping far too much, but I wanted to show how the flowers are working in their context. I think they’re still a little too bright, so I might glaze them with a thin Raw Umber (a greenish brown) to quiet them a bit. It’s quite nice to compare this shot with the one in the previous post.

I’m pretty happy with this though, it’s on the right road. Perhaps a few more flowers to the right hand side of the bush?

I’ve added more light grey wild rose leaves to the bottom left corner. They’re disconcertingly bright at present, excessively drawing focus because they’re so strong against almost everything else in the painting and totally overwhelming even the white rose flowers that I  painted last week, but this will change as soon as I put a yellow-green glaze over them, when the darkness and density of the paint will either make them feel more absorbed into the background or pop forward from the shadows, depending on there position in the painting (those that I need to recede will blend more to the darker shadows, while those I need to pop forward will be painted lighter and with more vibrant colour).

I’m relishing the fast growth of my back garden roses right now, which are throwing out lovely new red leaves with reckless abandon, and reminding me to add a little reddish brown around the edges of the more defined foreground leaves in the painting to make them seem real.

I’m thoroughly enjoying painting these roses, especially now that I’ve finally reached the top layer, where they are more specific and detailed and at last I can really see how the left corner is going to look when it’s complete. This layer is painted in a light blue-grey, mixing Ceramic White with Payne’s Grey, in much the same way that I did the first layer of the acacia tree leaves up in the top right. Once they’re complete (I want to continue putting them across the bottom half of the canvas) they’ll be ready for a glaze of yellow and green to make these ghostly shapes look more like living rose branches.

I love the roses in my garden and I like the idea of these painted wild roses bringing pleasure to people. But perhaps I should discretely paint some mildew and rust on the leaves, and some aphids being eaten by ladybirds, to remind us that even in the most beautiful wonders of the natural world we can find the cycle of birth and death. This fits nicely with the theme of the four paintings of which this is one – this piece is the journey of life, followed by the angel of death, followed by the in between state after life and prior to birth, then finally the cycle is completed by the angel of birth. (Incidentally, I don’t view any one of the four paintings as the beginning or end of the cycle, the four together make a unity.)

The acacia leaves are finished in the right hand corner, but I’m considering adding more to the paintings in the lower right quarter. To complete the leaves I added a stroke of Burnt Sienna mixed with Raw Sienna to each leaf, turning them a little reddish-green.

I want to show how the horizon can be made to appear to fade away into the distance so I’m posting a before and after photo here – In the first picture I’ve applied a layer of Ceramic white over the top of the mountains and sky, making sure to cover further than the area that I know I want the glaze to go. The paint extended across the whole horizon line, of course. Using a soft rag (old  T-shirt) to gently wipe away the paint yields a soft coat of very thin white paint which gives the illusion of a distant haze over the landscape, seen in the second photo. I love the way everything appears to be falling back in the painting because of this neat illusory trick.

Meanwhile, in the foreground I’ve been using the same Ceramic white to put down the base coat of the wild roses that line the traveler’s path. In contrast to the thinness of the paint when it was used to make the horizon hazy, here I’ve put it onto the canvas with a soft round brush, letting the paint stay thick and ridged so that it will come toward the foreground and feel much closer. As I add detail to the flowers they will become more distinct and gain some colour.

I’m getting a good sense of how the painting will turn out. Looking good.

I’ve added a layer of dark green over the blue work, working nicely to add substance to the tree over the traveler. In the detail you can see the blues remaining visible about the leaves, while in the big picture this is not particularly visible. I like this kind of variation because it brings vibration to the painting – we may not be particularly aware of the blue, but our eye sees a difference and we unconsciously perceive  that movement about the edges of things that is always there. If everything is moving, vibrating at an atomic level, then the surfaces of things are constantly in a shimmering state of action against each other, moving against the sky, shivering among the stones.