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I generally plan my year out in terms of exhibitions, galleries, shows I need to work towards as I need to juggle my art commitments alongside my full time job. So to decide to jump in head first into a project which I needed to commit to for at least 3 months was well... a little bit left field to say the least. 

So I am loving my new studio but with work commitments and generally feeling a bit meh about all this lockdown I found myself not leaving the house for 3-4 days at one point in January. So I decided to join the 100 day project this year and I am creating a little painting each day based on the weather and using a limited palette.

My time for painting is very limited so when I do get a couple of days completely free I like to scale up and let loose on a large pieces of Arches paper.

I'm not really sure where the inspiration for this painting came from other than the dark autumnal colours; it isn't a scene that I recognise. Sometimes a painting just comes about because of the colours that I want to use and I was really wanting to create a large scale imposing clouds scene. 

Driving from Newcastle on Christmas Eve the sun had been glorious all the way home but as we hit Yorkshire the sun started to go down and with it the temperatures. The rapidly dropping temperature created steaming trails of mist along the valleys, in tree tops and on roof tops. As we descended down a hill towards home the image stuck in my mind of muted greens and blues. 

 

I have been using Arches Huille paper since I first started using oil and cold wax and I love it!  But I really wanted to scale up and see what could be achieved on a larger scale using the paper and oil and cold wax.  The valley trembles is my first large scale painting using oil and cold wax on paper.