Chris Rose - Artist - Studio Page

2007-06-29T10:58:00.000+01:00

Finished painting: At last! It was a hard slog but is now done. After finishing the reedy flotsam I added a bit more refinement to the trees; added some twigs sprouting from the tree trunks; put in a few standing reeds and painted the teal. The painting will look better once varnished as this will bring out some contrast, deepen the dark areas and enrich the colours a bit. This painting will be in my one-man show at the Wildlife Art Gallery in November (see 'Events' page)

2007-06-11T19:26:00.000+01:00

Stage 7 - detail.

2007-06-11T19:20:00.000+01:00

Stage 7: I'm part way through 'finishing' the floating reed flotsam. This is a hard slog and the most tedious, boring part of this painting to do. I knew when I first had the idea that it would be hard going, and I was right! I try to keep the the thought in mind that the finished picture will be worth it. Let's hope so!

2007-06-06T08:38:00.000+01:00

Stage 6: I've finished roughing in the floating reed stems and now I have a better idea of how the colours are working. This has only taken a day to do and I now have to go back over this area adding a bit more substance and finish to the floating vegetation. Although from a distance it may look fine as it is, closer inspection will show that it is still rather crudely done.

2007-06-04T09:41:00.000+01:00

Stage 5: I was unhappy with the random pattern of floating reeds - it made the composition look too static. Reference photos showed that the reeds actually seemed to be arranged more in drifts so I decided to introduce a flow to the pattern to lead your eye up from the bottom of the picture towards the bird. Here I have started roughly blocking in this new pattern, more-or-less obliterating what I had done before with more opaque paint. I'm using this process to introduce more of the intended final colours to the painting.

2007-05-26T18:11:00.000+01:00

Stage 4: Here I've started to paint the water, working the scattered floating dead reed stems into the wet paint. Working 'wet-in-wet' in this way I have also lightly indicated a few submerged reeds that are just visible below the surface. Although the change is subtle, there are three shades of blue already as the colour gradually darkens towards the bottom of the picture.

2007-05-21T16:17:00.000+01:00

Stage 3: I decided to roughly paint in the trees first as I needed to 'know' what they looked like before I could paint their reflections in the water. At the same time I tested out some blues for the water next to the tree trunks to make sure the colours and tones worked together.

2007-05-17T20:22:00.000+01:00

Stage 2: Still using diluted paint I've finished blocking in the water and have added a few dark areas at the bases of the tree trunks where the wood is wet, and have indicated the positions of the reflections of the trees. With a bit of free time at the end of the day I added some colour to the teal although this is not really important at this stage.

2007-05-17T09:23:00.000+01:00

Stage 1: This will be an oil painting. Having stained the board with a light wash of burnt sienna I have roughly drawn in the basic composition in thin paint diluted with turps. This dries very quickly so I can then start painting over the top the next day. I've already started putting in the dark spaces of clear water between the criss-cross pattern of floating reed stems at the bottom of the picture. This helps both to establish the darkest tones of the painting and to roughly map out the patterns of dead reeds.

2007-05-15T17:40:00.000+01:00

Teal - field painting: This is the field painting for my next painting, which will be of a drake teal in this loch-edge setting. I was attracted to the scene by the contrasting colours of blue and orange-golds, and by the conflicting patterns of tree trunks, shadows and the lattice-work of broken, dead reed stems that had gathered at the shore, pushed there over the winter by wind and waves.

2007-04-23T17:37:00.000+01:00

Finished Painting: Finally I've finished working on the water, and have added some legs to the bird! The pale area of water at the bottom of the painting is reflected sky and I had a lot of trouble making this look convincing. I had to add reflections of a few small, winter trees and the odd fence-post to help explain what was going on down there. In places, in the dark area of water, the sand just shows through as a speckled texture, where individual grains of sand are themselves reflecting bits of sky. This too posed problems and I spent a long time trying to get that looking right. All in all a bit of a nightmare, but hopefully it will look better when it's varnished.

I liked the the very flat light of this overcast winter's day as it helped accentuate the bold, almost abstract shapes of the boulders and the water, without a lot of shadows complicating the scene.

2007-04-11T14:03:00.000+01:00

Stage 10: I've started bringing the water to a reasonable level of 'finish'. This is the most difficult area. There are a lot of subtle, intermingling patterns at play: most of the water is a mid-brown colour, which is a reflection of the brown winter vegetation on the escarpment that rises up at the back of the beach (out of the picture); as the water running over the sand is only very shallow (a matter of millimetres in places) it is also possible to discern something of the texture and patterns of the sand beneath the water surface.

2007-04-03T09:36:00.000+01:00

Stage 9: I've painted most of the bird, although I was having trouble putting the legs in the right place so I'll come back to that later! Having not looked at the picture for a few days (yes - artists are allowed time off too!) I can see a few things wrong with the shape of the bird, in particular the head, so now with the benefit of a 'fresh eye' I can tweak the shape slightly. I shall move on to the water first though.

2007-03-30T17:26:00.000+01:00

Stage 8: Boulders now complete. I'll probably work on the bird next and leave the water (the most difficult bit) until last.

2007-03-29T18:01:00.000+01:00

Stage 7b: The completed boulder!

2007-03-29T17:51:00.000+01:00

Stage 7: I've started to work on the boulders in the background, putting some form and texture to them. I start by painting in the darker areas - areas of shadow, fissures in the rock etc., and then I'll paint in the light areas, blending in to the dark paint.

2007-03-22T18:57:00.000Z

Stage 6: I've finished blocking in the area of dark water. The colours seems to work so tomorrow I can concentrate on tidying it up and making it look a little more convincing. I've also completed the pale sand that butts up to the water, paying careful attention to tone and colour here to give the impression of the sand being wetter near the edge where it meets the water. Stages 5 and 6 have taken me the best part of a day.

2007-03-22T18:50:00.000Z

Stage 5(cont.): I'm just going to roughly paint this whole area in without worrying about the finish too much at this stage. This will let me see how well the colours and tones are working with the rest of the picture. If it looks disastrous at the end of this process I can wipe it off, tweak the colours a bit and re-paint it until I get it right, without having wasted a lot of time getting reflections etc. painted realistically.

2007-03-22T18:44:00.000Z

Stage 5: I've started painting the main area of water that fans out in a thin film over the sand.

2007-03-21T18:03:00.000Z

Stage 4: Sand painted to about half-way down the picture. The next stage will be to finish the dry sand and paint in the fan of run-off water. Ideally I'll want to complete this in one go so that the two areas can be blended together while the paint is still wet.

2007-03-21T18:00:00.000Z

Stage 3(b): Detail of sand and water rivulet being painted in at top right of picture.

2007-03-21T17:51:00.000Z

Stage 3: I've started painting in the sand and rivulets of water running down from the boulders at the top of the beach. The sand is painted in three subtly different shades of brown while the water, which is reflecting the boulders and the rising escarpment behind (out of the picture), is painted using a further three or four darker browns. It is critical at this stage to get the colours right and I'll spend several hours mixing colours and trying them out together on small areas of the painting until I'm happy with them. These test-dabs of paint are simply wiped off before proper painting begins.

2007-03-16T10:22:00.000Z

Stage 2: I've roughly blocked in the boulders at the back - this gives me the darkest tonal values of the picture which will help me judge the colours to mix for rest of the painting. I have held back from making these colours too dark as to do so would have made this background area jump forward too much; I want to convey a feeling of space and depth towards the back of the picture so have used muted darks.

2007-03-15T12:31:00.000Z

Stage 1: Having stained the board a neutral colour to establish a mid- to light-tone and to kill the stark white of the board, I have roughed in the composition (as per my preferred composition doodle) in thin oil paint. It's at this early stage, which only takes half an hour, that compositional changes can be made when I see what the painting might look like at full-scale.

2007-03-15T12:27:00.000Z

Composition sketches: The next stage is to play around with the composition by 'doodling' on layout paper. It's at this stage I decide the shape and size of the finished painting as well as the general design. I can now prepare a board of the appropriate size.