29C and sunshine

... that's the forecast for Santiago de Chile, for tomorrow, the day after and the day after that.

How do I know? I've been checking it out frequently.

Why do I care? Because I will be there as of next Friday onwards. In fact - the forecast for Antofagasta in the North of Chile has been greeting me for past few days with incessant sunshine.

Now - Antofagasta - ANTOFAGASTA - hm, what a name... so many 'a's and so little else. Rather beautiful, don't you think? And, while the town maybe a bit much harbour and industry, it's on the way to this:

Moon rise over the Valle de la Luna, Chile,
by Simon Prisner

And the best of it all: I will be there at the next full moon. In San Pedro de Atacama.

The Atacama desert and the Pacific ocean, the Pacific ocean and the Atacama desert. A full moon and one of the clearest skies on earth. For three weeks.

Did I say where I will be going?

I've made some plans on painting/sketching material - and one of the things I'm seriously considering is taking a small plate along and some ink for monotypes.

Have you ever taken printmaking material on plein air outings? If so, what type of printmaking and where? I'm very intrigued by this - in fact, I may give it a try on my next trip to Balloch on Sunday with H. - that should give me a sense of practicality before lugging it halfway around the world.

Now - there was a plan to brush up my Spanish - that has for one reason or another not materialised. But, I had been doing a bit of digging around Chilenean poetry - there is Pablo Neruda of course. I also came across Gabriela Mistral. A mystical and rather romantic earthieness and invocation of nature... How's this for a start?

DESPERTAR

Dormimos, soñé la Tierra
del Sur, soñé el Valle entero,
el pastal, la viña crespa,
y la gloria de los huertos.
¿Qué soñaste tú mi Niño
con cara tan placentera?

Vamos a buscar chañares
hasta que los encontremos,
y los guillaves prendidos
a unos quioscos del infierno.
El que más coge convida
a otros dos que no cogieron.
Yo no me espino las manos
de niebla que me nacieron.
Hambre no tengo, ni sed y
sin virtud doy o cedo.
¿A qué agradecerme así
fruto que tomo y entrego?


And another one:

YO NO TENGO SOLEDAD

Es la noche desamparo
de las sierras hasta el mar.
Pero yo, la que te mece,
¡yo no tengo soledad!

Es el cielo desamparo
si la Luna cae al mar.
Pero yo, la que te estrecha,
¡yo no tengo soledad!

Es el mundo desamparo
y la carne triste va.
Pero yo, la que te oprime,
¡yo no tengo soledad!

And in case you wonder: no, my Spanish isn't good enough to get it completely, just a little bit and enough to be interested..., I'm sure there are some translations out there...

See here for more of her work in Spanish

Compositional struggles

On-site sketch, Maktesh HaGadol,
W/C on Moleskine
24x21 cm

Yesterday's desert landscape has been the latest in a long series of attempts of grappling with one scene from my Spring holiday to the Negev.

Following on from several on site sketches, pastel sketches, some more compositional pencil drawings and a round of gouache and pastel sketches to establish highlights, I still felt that the composition of what I started with was too complicated and unnecessary. I felt I was struggling with elements where each elements worked in its own right but not as part of the painting.

Cropping the image on the left to leave out a difficult-to-read midground was my solution for the time being. It seems to work a lot better through this simplification. Click here to see the cropped image.

Pastel/Gouache on paper, Maktesh HaGadol
40x30cm

Pencil sketch of ridge detail

Acrylics, gouache, then pastels

This is what I did this morning. Having taken my camera with me, I took pictures of the process for this desert landscape.




Step one: placing major shapes and colours with acrylics (brush and knife). I was particularly keen to get the rock faces (dark purple) placed and also to create the highlights in a light/mid value rather than too light. These are a couple of layers of acrylic washes. I mixed gloss medium with the acrylics to increase brilliance.
There is a bit of wiping off, sponging on, splashing and scratching going on across the painting.



Step two: working over the acrylics, I added gouache layers - to increase variation and add local colours, notably reds/oranges and greens.

Colored Sands Study, 35x35 cm
Mixed media on Colorfix board

Step three: Adding pastels - creating texture; integrating colours: notably moving pale blue/violet throughout the painting, taking back some of the strong yellow/greens and to place some orange highlights; creating detail of ridge in foreground and defining rock in middle ground.

I'll talk about the composition tomorrow - this one has been giving me some headaches but I think I may have found a solution for it...

Desert sketches...

Mulling over, looking through and eventually just making a start with desert painting series by going back to the photos and sketches I made on site at the Coloured Sands in the Makhtesh HaGadol, south of Dimona.
The site itself is quite extensive and is made up of loosely sedimented layers of clay, sands and above all strongly coloured iron ore layers - ranging in colour from pale grey to glowing gold ochre to dark purple. - I've created a Google Map to link to the site: click here to see a satellite image of the area
I captured one of the main views on site, as mentioned in this earlier entry here - but before I feel I can go back to do that as a painting, I need to 'get to know' the location again. Just as well that we took lots of photos in addition to the sketches. Many of these are detailed shots of different small rocks, sand dunes and larger vistas.

Here are the first two pastel studies of one of the rock formations for detail and colour:



Coloured Sands Study 1, pastel on paper, 40x30cm



Coloured Sands Study 2, pastel on paper, 30x40cm

Now that I've started on these, I feel that I'm getting a sense of colour, texture and place to continue with these ones - so, keep watching

Desert colours

I had planned to work on a series of landscape paintings - mainly in pastel, when I had come back from Israel in Spring. I started with exploring colour ranges and different underpaintings to get a feel for the desert in Spring. This is one is so far the only one colour study for this.


Spring in the sky, pastel on board, 50x70 cm

The palette consists of light blues, turquoise and various Earth colours (my new acquisition of a Unison Natural Earth set has come in very handy), mixed with a few vibrant colours such as orange, yellow green and red, as in this detail of the horizon line: