(Each panel 30 x 102 cm. Centre Panel displayed 6 cm apart on each side.)This is a subject from Lake Boomanjin on Fraser Island – another one of those subjects you see when looking for something else. I just happened to look down in front of me, and there it was – or to be specific, the idea was. Pieces of dead reeds washed up as flotsam on the sandy edge of the lake, displaying a natural but aesthetic order, juxtaposing their directions with the surface of the environment, forming a play between positive and negative shapes … Fascinating! Later on, in the studio, I decided to divide the subject into three panels of the same size, making it a triptych. One large panel on its own (102 x 102 cm) would have been uninteresting, but three small panels (30 x 102 cm) displayed separately, with a continuous design relating throughout, seemed to work very well.
A lot more effort though involved – three stretcher frames and canvases, and three minimal picture frames – but when hung, about 6 cm apart from the centre panel, the design was far more appealing. The spectrum is conservative: ultramarine and raw umber, variously combined with body white (zinc) to produce many light and dark greys, and a yellow ochre and white combination create other necessary lights. The more dominant titanium white, being the overall highlighter.
How to make sand look like sand? A difficult question. However, by experimenting with many different brushes, with stubbier bristles, and by flicking or splattering at the canvas paint of different consistencies and colours – blue, grey, brown, white and yellow – gradually with practice, a good quality of surface was built up that had the appearance of sand. I have used this method with all sand areas in my paintings, except in more distant perspectives.
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