Evolution of a painting

Willow on the Pang. Oil on Linen, 50cm x 75cm. February 2024

When we see paintings on websites, in galleries or on the walls of people’s homes, we rarely see anything of the process that goes into the making of the work so I thought it would be nice to show something about how one of my paintings evolves. As I’m working on a piece, I am in the habit of photographing it at the end of each session. In this case I’m showing you how the painting Willow on the Pang evolved.

The River Pang flows into The Thames at Pangbourne - hence the name of the town, but this is a few miles upstream at a village called Bradfield, where I lived and worked for many years.

Session one - underpainting

The canvas is medium Belgian linen, sized with Rabbit Skin glue and double primed with an oil primer. I prefer oil primers to acrylic because of the feel of the brush and behaviour of the paint though they do require quite a bit more preparation.

This is the initial mapping out of the idea done in oil paint heavily diluted with turpentine - hence all the drips - starting initially with Terre Verte and gradually adding a bit more colour, though “gradually” is a relative term as this stages took well under an hour, possibly closer to 30 minutes.

Session two

Blocking in and giving more form and substance to the scene. No detail at all, this is more about establishing planes, spaces and dynamics, thinking up the paint a bit and increasing the range of colours used.

Session three

Re-drawing certain elements such as the river bank on the right hand side and working to refine the path

Session four

Starting to add some detail though it’s still wide open. The gap in the trees suggesting a second view had, until now, only been suggested but I started to refine this now - though it’s obviously still jumping out a lot. I overworked the water at this point but it was useful in that it forced me to do something about it when I saw it next. I’ve developed the idea of the willow here without really looking for detail. I was struggling with the trees on the far left and in the background

Session five

I completely repainted the far left and background trees here, but ended up a bit unhappy with the mark-making, feeling it was getting too fussy. I’m starting to get the small brushes out here to suggest foliage and to refine the willow. The space under the willow was re-established and helps bring the willow forward but at this point there’s still quite a lot to make work. The trees surrounding the willow will be addressed next and long-haired thin brushes loaded with Cobalt Greens and Cobalt Teal used to start to make whips flowing marks to help suggest the willow better.

Session six - finishing

You never quite know when a painting will be finished and often it’s when it has got to a point where it’s no longer telling you to do stuff. I was at the point here where decisions were made for the painting’s sake which improved

When