Middle Stages

During the middle stages of the painting I gradually thickened the paint by pouring together different colours mixed in different medium consistencies. For instance the transparent colours were poured over opaque lighter colours  to produce a glowing surface that alluded to a winter time  shaft of light that appeared over a section of ocean making it turquoise. This colour contrasted with purple and indigo cloud shadow.

Winter seas buffeted the coastline washing away part of this land form so I depicted remnants of this structure as they disappeared beneath wild seas. Flowing and bleeding texture, edges and boundaries blurred over the structure beneath in the under painting so that only earth coloured remnants of the land form appeared to be above the water’s surface.

At this stage the subject matter  also ‘talked’ to me and the essence of the composition revealed itself more clearly. This process happened to me when my paint application  became freer which produced nuanced and random texture and light contrast effects. The composition appeared to change and instead of my planned vertical format it changed to horizontal. The colour reproduced is a little inaccurate, instead of the grey on the left the colour is a neutral soft blue green with a touch of raw umber and Naples yellow. These combinations gave a sense of an approximation to shallow water with sand not quite visible.