Re-purposed canvas - Cork Tree work in progress

Cork Tree (Working Title) Work in Progress
Stage 1

Oil palette knife painting

30x60 cm 12x24 inch

It's iris time again. Every year we take a trip over to an iris nursery near Hyeres. It's quite a trip so we usually take the opportunity to travel around and take in a some of the countryside. This year was no exception. Part of our travels takes us through the Maures national park which is full of oak cork trees and sweet chestnut trees. I always take loads of photos, of course, and plenty of the cork trees.

We last went around this area last September and I painted this cork tree painting

 Cork Sentinels available in my Etsy shop

About Today's Painting

For today's painting I needed a long canvas. I had a 30x60 cm canvas with a partly  painted lily on it. I lost interest in the lily and it has been sitting on my 'to be finished pile' for about 2 years. As it was only as far as the underpainting stage the acrylic layer was quite thin and made an ideal surface for painting my cork tree. 

 

Stage 1

I wiped a thin layer of linseed oil over the canvas before mapping out the shape of the tree. After roughly indicating the outline of the tree I filled in the sky spaces. I used a mixture of ultramarine blue, ocean blue and white which was a mixture of underpainting white, this dries super fast, and titanium white. My intention was to start darker at the top, move through to light blue and indicate more cloud at the bottom. I also paid attention to the sky spaces making sure they were all different shapes and sizes and all abstract. I wasn't too fussed about covering all of the old painting - perhaps the colour peeping through would add 'something'.

It's funny, but I find the effect of the old painting on the tree trunk oddly interesting!