I did this from my car -parked in Ivinghoe Beacon looking roughly East past Dagnall (not visible!).
The view was a typical Autumn landscape and I wanted to show the variety in colour… Although the colours are all in that greenish-brown-gold range and I looked to use red, blue and yellow to create the required colours as I went.
While setting up my scene, parking the car at the right angle and propping open the side door, I realised that the window in the sliding door was tinted and it was interesting to be able to see part of the scene through the window. I used a portable easel to prop the door half open.
I became interested in the perspective – the open countryside provides a distant view that is defined in part by the clouds so I started by using them as a basis to grasp the perspective. The doorway framing this view helped to add a baseline to this distance – it being a very close part of the scene.
Reflecting on my work so far I’m thinking that I don’t really have an approach for the traditional kind of landscape picture. All I’ve done here is cope with the unusual conditions I find myself in and try to represent the view in a straightforward area-and-colour way. The British landscape seems destined for this kind of ‘colouring-in’ treatment due to its patchwork nature.
This is an interesting stage where none of the framing parts are painted but the view through the opening is complete to a degree. There’s an otherworldly effect… The Twilight Zone… Dr Who… Sapphire and Steel… supernatural and sci-fi.
I can imagine that I could play with this (as other have) by mixing and matching the view and the portal.
It reminds me of this book that I’ve read “Tunnel in the Sky” which deals with travel through a wormhole-type affair to another planet. Interesting that the portal has been depicted in both ways by these two artists – one where we see the tunnel from the planet, and the second where we see the planet through the tunnel.
I could reverse my picture to paint the inside of my car through the open door, but paint the countryside instead of the outside of the car. It’ll be part of the surrealists’ repertoire.
The clouds have not shown up in my photograph but, now finished, the car interior has added a whole new something to the picture that was not there when it was only painted as a landscape.
AS shown by the cloud cover the day was overcast. There were occasional breaks in the clouds where the sun caught the landscape and made it shine in gold and green but these were quite fleeting.
The interior is a contrast – dark and very discernably inside rather than al fresco.
The tinted window worked rather well. The darker version of the landscape, because it can be compared to the open view, gives a good sense of the tinted glass. The cars that were parked in view at the start of my session had gone by the end so I just painted the unobstructed view.
It was hard to work fast and accurately. I didn’t feel I could spend time describing the nearer trees with individual branches so I tried to capture a sense of them. The farther trees were easier in a way because they were less defined, more like smudges of colour in the distance.
I found that I had chosen a poor surface to paint upon and using white as the ground presented problems in the end as it showed through too easily. It was ueful for the clouds, of course.
Painting 1 / Brian O'Carroll 