Week 41 of „One Year – One Island“ – Lofta
At the beginning of September, I arrived in an area I didn’t know very well, or even knew at all: the coastal strip south of Sandvik all the way to Äleklinta (I’ve marked this part on the map). I found it difficult to find the right subject this time, as I had the impression that this stretch of coast wasn’t particularly different from the coast north of Sandvik: lots of gray or red limestone quarried here, the winding dirtroad along the coastline, rocky beaches and shaggy, dry grass, wild roses, blackthorn and juniper bushes—a rough and barren landscape. I like this rugged nature, where nothing is lovely. It´s fitting, that so many Highland cattle are kept here on vast pastures. I love these shaggy animals, who appear so brutal on the outside, yet seem to have a gentle and phlegmatic nature. Ever since I was young, I’d rather see Scotland or Iceland than travel to the Bahamas or Thailand. I also find a certain drama in nature fascinating; I’m thinking of landscapes like those from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (filmed in New Zealand) with endlessly cascading waterfalls, rocky peaks in a snowstorm, etc. Okay, of course, Öland isn’t quite as dramatic as that. Not exactly dramatic, but not lovely either.
I drove along the bumpy dirtroad and no motif immediately “jumped out” at me until I reached Lofta. On the Kalmarsund side I found hills of red limestone. I suspect this was a dumping place for smaller stones, left over from the quarry and unused because they were too small. Here, too, tourists seemed to be climbing around, stacking small walls to create paths within the mounds. Again, there were many stacked towers, but also small rooms made of rounded stacked walls. While I was climbing around, I mentally went through the pictures I’d painted so far. Would these red limestone mounds be a boring repeat of the paintings I’d already made? There was the cliff edge “Stora Raset,” but as a summer bathing cove, not focusing on the stone cliff itself. Then the quarry in Grönhagen, but also filled with water and a summer beach resort. Or the many stacked stone towers at the northern lighthouse. And of course, the shingle beach in Sandvik. No, I thought these red hills could be used as a motif. Maybe it wouldn’t be the most interesting painting of the project, but there was nothing around here that seemed more interesting to me as a motif.
For me, the appeal lay more in the task of realizing this motif than in the motif itself. How should I proceed? I couldn’t sketch each individual stone and paint it separately. It had to be painted as a group. In such a case, it helps me to look at the motif with squinted eyes, so to see through my eyelashes in a rather blurry way. That way you get a general impression of what you have in front of you. In this case, not surprising: a red surface with a blue surface (sky) above it. Good. So that had to be the starting point. So I sketched the line between the sky and the hill. Then I looked at the hilly landscape ahead of me: there were lighter and darker patches, darker shadows where a hollow was hidden between the stone slabs. Then there was a spot where the stones were so small they were more like gravel, and in one place they formed a small scree slope. And then there were some thorny tentacles of a wild rose, with rose hips attached to them. So that was what needed to be created.
I started with the sky, which is what I almost always do. Then I mixed the matching brown-red of the limestones. There were also gray limestones in between, which I would leave as light spots in the red area. So, a light red area below the sky. The darkest area (besides the shadows in the hollows) seemed to me to be the stacked stone towers, which represented the borderline between the sky and the stone mound, because they looked almost like silhouettes against the light background. I painted those next. All the other stones lay on the light-dark scale between the already painted (light) red area and the dark borderline. So I tried to paint a broad variation of red, slightly angular forms, like an overlapping mosaic, onto the light red area. Then I mixed a very dark brown from the colors neutral ink, burnt umber, and Payne’s gray and scribbled and dabbed lines of varying thicknesses onto the dried red mosaic. These were meant to represent the shadows of the hollows between and beneath the layered stone slabs.
So it’s not about painting a single stone (I wouldn’t be finished in 100 years), but about capturing the structure of the motif and recreating that structure with colors. Just like when painting a lawn, for example: you don’t paint every blade of grass and every leaf. It’s more of a striped structure in a variation of light and dark green tones, perhaps a touch of bluish where the shadow is between the blades of grass. At least, that’s a common way to do it among painters. In the foreground, you can then elaborate on one or two details to better explain to the viewer what they’re seeing as a whole. That’s why I painted some stones in the middle foreground in a little more detail (but not too much detail, because otherwise they would seem like a foreign body in the mass).
Then more red stone surfaces… I often take photos in between so I can look back later and learn from mistakes. And also because it’s sometimes difficult to look at the picture with objective eyes. You’re too close, so to speak; you can’t judge what you’ve painted from the right distance. I find it helpful to take a photo and then look at it in the photo. Other artists use a mirror instead, looking at what they’ve just painted through a mirror to assess its overall appearance
.When I paused, changed my water, or simply wanted to stretch, I looked at the painting with “fresh eyes” and found that it had become too dark. Oh, I really got angry about myself!!! Then I did something that’s actually an absolute no-go (at least among watercolor painters): I moistened the paper and dabbed the paint with a kitchen towel so that the painted area became lighter (but unfortunately also softer and more blurred).
I was annoyed by this result, because the spontaneous freshness of the painting was gone. Looking back, I think the two intermediate results before it were much better. Image 2 is fine. I should have stopped there. But now it had happened, and I had to do something with it. It was too late for a second try (and only if I would have started completely from scratch could I recreate the spontaneous freshness of the painting). A fact I hadn’t considered at the beginning of the Öland-rund project: I have to show pictures here that I would normally discard. But this is also a very uncommon honest way of showing. Usually, the pictures an artist shows are only the ones they are satisfied with. Often, you paint one or two bad pictures before you create a good, presentable one. That’s certainly true with watercolor. Acrylic has the advantage that you can paint over it, and you can’t see the original failed part afterwards.
So here is the result (which I wouldn’t have shown outside of this project):
As I had feared before sketching: not exactly the most interesting motif, and unfortunately, not a result I’m particularly proud of. But the next picture – painted just a few days later – was better, and the subject matter was more interesting.
Until then
