Methods
Insight into the creation of a painting
Over the past 20 years, I’ve been extremely lucky to have met and chatted to many ex-Bomber Command aircrew. I’ve always been fascinated by them as they were just ordinary young men who volunteered to do their bit for the war effort. Most of them agreed that the worst part of any operation was the hour before take-off when they were bused out to their distant dispersal ready to board their aircraft. For many of them it was hard to keep their nerves under control, knowing that this might be the night that they would die a violent and horrible death, or be badly injured by flak or fighters. Strangely enough, once on-board, for many the nerves disappeared as they went about their duties and concentrated on getting the bomber to their objective.
It was this final walk to the aircraft therefore that I wanted to capture in Veterans. The scene was so strong in my head that I didn’t work on any preliminary sketches, (never a good idea!), I just went straight in and applied paint to canvas.
My main concept was to have the Lancaster very dark and towering over the men, with a bleak and cold wintry landscape all around. We would be walking with the men and none of them should be talking to each other, each one lost in his own thoughts.
1
In the first picture here, I have applied a loose grey cloudbase to the sky and roughly blocked in the Lancaster and snow. I’ve worked on the background trees and started to think about the shape of the dispersal pan and reflections in the concrete. This is probably as close as I’ll get to my original bleak concept with a very monochrome palette and no strong direct light. I love grey, in fact grey is my favourite colour, as within it you can have all the colours of the rainbow. But it’s also the hardest colour to use successfully and although many of my paintings start off all grey and moody, most of them end up colourful and ‘optimistic’… which is really annoying!
2
In picture 2, I’ve added another coat of paint to the aircraft, played with the reflections on the perspex and worked on the background landscape. You’ll also notice a stronger yellow clearing to the horizon. The horizon is so important in a painting as it gives the artist the ultimate extent of depth in his painting. However, with this painting I was constantly torn between having a distant clear horizon, for depth, or a dark foreboding cloud for atmosphere. You’ll see it alternates several times during the course of the painting…
3
Picture 3 is quite a bit further on. You can see the horizon has reverted back to dark grey, the foreground snow has increased and the trees in the background have changed significantly as I tried to work out whether we needed depth on the left of the picture. It’s often the case that you create by accident a really nice small section which you desperately try to preserve. Unfortunately it’s also often the case that in the end you have to remove it to make the picture work as a whole. This happened with the trees on the left in the first two pictures, which I really liked. Unfortunately I felt that the painting needed a stronger vertical there so I added the Elm tree and enlarged the background trees.
I also added some figures for the first time as I needed to get a feel for where they might be. I was toying with the idea of just having six men as the viewer could then feel like the seventh. However, I could just imagine the letters I’d get from enthusiasts pointing out that the Lancaster had a crew of seven, so I decided to add an extra man, to save postage…
4
In picture 4, the painting now has its seventh sky, and again a clearance has appeared in the distance. I’ve also done a bit of de-forestation on the left to give us some depth through the tailplane. I’ve lost two of the men in the process, I can’t remember how many times I lost the propellers as the new skies came and went!
I really loved the yellow sun reflected in the bomb aimer’s blister and was desperate to keep it. I think my only problem at this point was that it looked a bit mid-dayish and not late evening.
5
Picture 5 has probably my favourite sky of all of them and I sometimes wish I just finished it up from here. The dark horizon has a lovely threatening feel to it and there is still a nicely limited palette to the whole picture. I’ve reintroduced the two men further away with the seventh man climbing aboard. I’ve also extended the concrete out of the picture to the right, giving us a lead into the picture and a nice area of grey to reflect the sky. There’s also more snow in the foreground, as the picture becomes ever more busy this was one area that could provide a simplified balance. You can also see for the first time, a lot of detail added to the Lancaster, especially the cockpit and engines.
6
By picture 6 I was getting pretty frustrated with the whole thing as the sky had got the clearance again and colour was creeping in. I think the reason I did it was to make it more like late evening so I moved the light source round to more behind the aircraft and added some colour and texture to the clouds above the left-hand trees, which you’ll notice have been trimmed quite a bit. I’ve also cleared some of the snow from behind the aircraft as this area has a critical effect on how far it appears away from the tail section.
7
Picture 7 at last starts to show a final stages sort of feel as detail gets added to the foreground and a Lancaster appears in the distance. The most significant addition here is the blue sky clearing to the right of the picture. This was totally against my original concept but I felt it was needed to cool the picture down and balance the warmth of the sunset. The trees have grown again on the left hand side, despite me really liking the cloud that was there… I just felt that the composition needed a stronger support in this area.
8
The last picture is of the final result. A mass of small details have been added such as the mascot in the nearest airman’s boot, the Trolley Acc and a few more footprints.
