I’ve just begun laying out an initial underpainting. It’s made up of several elements having begun with an image from photo of a river and large rocks, where we camped and swam last summer. Then I painted the images of tents that were hanging to dry (the blue) after that trip and the pencil pines which line one side of our back garden (top left). The figures were then added from my imagination. Whereas most of my work of the last years would have the figure grounded,  I want these and all the other elements to be more like collage although with careful consideration of how they all fit together. As with my little experiment of the vase a few weeks ago, I would like to push the fracturing of the space further and the range of technique also. Hopefully this also gives the possibility of developing the concept and narrative a bit further.

I’ve used oils with a mix of 3/4 mineral spirits as the solvent and 1/4 stand oil although it was all done in a flurry so that ratio might have varied. Rather than just one colour, I used a limited palette of Raw Umber, French Ultramarine, Ochre/Raw Sienna and a cool red. These were what had been left on my palette, so not a lot of planning there. The river is fairly limited in colour but complex so a little colour helps differentiate the forms at an early stage.

This is the first time I have documented my process so it will become clear how many changes a work can go through. At this point I will begin working up everything apart from the figures and use a model to paint the figure properly once I am sure of the composition.