View of a stormy evening sky in the west or, ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky or, Leviathan swimming in the celestial oceans

IMG_5623#2 Leviathan in the celestial ocean

IMG_5622#2 painting

Oil study on canvas, (based on a snapshot taken Thursday Nov 29 at approx 5 pm,) 18 x 14″, Nov 30 2018

7 Comments

    1. Thanks! Since I’ve been living out here my entire understanding of skies has changed. I used to have a very simple view and imagined the wind somehow blew in straight lines but of course it doesn’t! And now with the spruce forest plantations removed around the house the sky becomes the dominant feature in the landscape. It dwarfs everything else.

    1. Cheers! I’m looking into the colour theories of Charles Blanc (as understood by Vincent van Gogh.) He seems to have been important in this field developing further the laws of simultaneous contrast that originated with Michel Chevreul and the great Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix… I must also look at Adolphe Monticelli’s paintings… yes, a kind-of mixture of these along with Honore Daumier, his brushwork. The skies here are incredible, always showing some new face.

  1. @outsideauthority… Sorry to hear about that. I spent most of my life in and around cities in the UK before moving out here so, what with buildings everywhere I wasn’t that aware of the sky. I never really liked or appreciated Turner’s skies, all that yellow light, (I can remember getting bored by looking at painting after painting of his in the Tate,) but he was onto something. And many of Constable’s sky paintings are amazing… The sky isn’t just a blue space filled with cotton-wool clouds neatly arranged across it. It’s a ferociously wild place with all sorts of wind and water battles going on. I don’t think photographs can convey that inherent wildness. But boldly applied paint and vigorous brushwork can.. (but then I’m biased, for I’m no lover of photographic-type painting but am rather an advocate of painterliness!)

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