Huddled once again under the gas heater at our local cafe. The drawing degree of difficulty was higher today due to a very loud tree felling operation across the road and a highly excitable fellow coffee drinker describing the key points of a recent soccer match.
Post box and safety cones, 3 July 2013
Driving home through fog last night I noticed the way the light was falling around the streetlights.
I used lots of water to move the colour around the page and simulate the damp mixing of the atmosphere. I did one version, then once it had dried I went back and re-worked it changing the colour to a more orange than the yellow I started out with. Additional changes were also made to darken the tone of the light poles. I like the way that the black gouache gives some sense of the density of the fog.
Here are the two versions side by side. These are photographs of the paintings.
First and second versions of the painting
To give a more accurate rendering of the painting I scanned the final image.
Final version of my fog painting.
While I was painting this piece I thought about the work of Clarice Beckett (1887-1935) an artist who is known and even caricatured for her use of tones and mists in depicting scenes of her life in and around the Melbourne suburb of Beaumaris. Her work has only come back into wider recognition over the past few decades. Beckett’s work is now in many collections including that of the the National Gallery of Australia.
