i think an old bike under a cover could look good

200l oil drums in corner?

Got to have a "string" of garlic hanging from a wall, perhaps below the window......... or maybe from a bicycle

Although it would be nice to include so many of those objects, what you would end up with on canvas is exactly what they would look like in a real barn - total clutter!

In a painting it is possible to go too far by keep adding things, so I have carefully add stuff in here and there without upsetting the overall composition. Today I have added a bottle of wine, and a brass candlestick for some reason. It just popped into my head.

By adding small items like that I can keep the speed of the work going, any large changes or complicated things to paint that are added will slow down the progress as they all take time. I'm not done with adding stuff yet, but to save time it will be the simplest items to actually paint that go in. Wheels or spokes, any of that kind of thing are very time consuming to do.



Unlike watercolour painting which relies on the white of the paper for its lights, in Oil painting traditionally the work progresses from dark to light. What I did yesterday was to draw in and establish an underpainting in tones of grey, this acts as a base for the subsequent work in colour. In the photo above you can see that I have added a thin transparent earth colour over the main part of the canvas, this was done to tone down the grey even further, and to add an approximate tone of base coat for subsequent layers of colour.

At this stage I still don't know what colour to paint the car so I put in some blue to see how it looked, but I didn't like it so I'll have to think again. I also put in the base colour for the milk churn, which will be copper.

As I have no image to work from where the barn interior is concerned I need to invent the colours and details that will make it look believable. One of the ways that the grey underpainting will help me to do this is by suggesting the texture on the old plaster on the walls.



Remember when I toned the canvas with the grey paint before starting? Remember I said that I deliberately applied it unevenly? Well here's why. If you look at the close up of the section of wall above you will see that the thin transparent glaze of colour that I just put on over it allows those variations in tone to show through. I use those random shapes and shadows to give me the beginnings of the wall's 'old plaster' texture.



As you can see the canvas has darkened considerably now due to my painting into the initial colour wash that I laid down. This now gives me a better chance of correctly representing the dull light effect that would exist inside the barn. Notice the bottle of wine on the windowsill? I put that there, and then as an afterthought decided to leave some wine in it.



While I was at the window I put in the vague beginnings of some trees which can just be seen on the outside. At this stage I'm more concerned with balancing the light and shade, and getting the correct tones in to worry about details though, and as can be seen in the front wheel details are lost during this stage, only to be added again later on.

Again I now have to let this dry before I do another sitting, that's the only drawback with oil painting, some colours can take days to dry which is why I am using dull earths to begin with as they dry overnight allowing another sitting the next day.

old nail, next picasso

This is a barn in France, right? Surely a full-blown orgy taking place on a few bales of hay is de rigueur...

(Oops, did I say that out loud? )

Great work as always old nail!

I managed to fit another hour or so working on the painting in today.
Because the paint on the canvas is still wet it's hard to get a good photo without reflection of some sort showing, but I'll describe what I've done anyway.



I started off by adding a thin glaze of dark transparent paint over the areas that I want to be in shadow. A glaze is just paint held in a medium that consists of purified linseed oil, some turp's, and a dash of varnish. The old masters discovered that by keeping the darks transparent it was possible to create a greater sense of depth in the painting, a solid dark colour would reflect the light and appear grey, but glazed darks will glow as if they have an inner light.

I mixed up an 'old plaster' colour using a coloured grey, and painted it directly into the wet glaze, keeping my brush strokes random to give the impression of the flaky, uneven texture of the wall. The wall in shadow is kept slightly less defined than the one which has an area of light hitting it. Coloured greys by the way are greys mixed from combining complementary colours rather than white and black. I have no black on my palette, I don't need it, as I use just six colours and white.



Now that the entire grey of the underpainting has been covered, it's time to find my register for the tonal range and colours of the painting. Most people know that musicians have the musical scale, Doh - Ray- Me- etc. Well a similar scale exists in painting albeit a visual one so luckily I don't have to sing. What I tend to do around about this point in the painting is to find that scale by painting one object to completion, I then have something that contains both the darkest darks, and lightest lights against which I can gauge all the other tones in the painting.

I chose to work from the top down and painted the brass candlestick, adding a candle while I was at it. I then painted some of the the tarpaulin and rusty corrugated metal that rests on the roof, before putting in Boulanger's wicker basket as well.

Looking at the main photo above you might notice that the painting looks kind of 'fuzzy' and out of focus in some areas, only becoming sharper up at the top where today's work has just been done. That is typical of how my paintings progress, the laying in of the tones and colours is always my primary concern, after which I develop and refine the details, add or take away parts I like or don't like, and push toward the lighter parts of the painting which will eventually be placed on last.

While I'm painting I'm continually thinking things like, "Where would the light fall?" and Which parts would be hit by it?, What actual colour is brass? and so on. All these questions are necessary because apart from the car (which I have taken from a black and white photograph) I don't have any reference material, or a 'model' to copy from - so I make em up!

I've had a PM from a former draughtsman who informs me that the perspective of the wall in relation to the car isn't right. And as he's apparently managed to read this far down without understanding what I'm saying, I think I should clarify my deliberately lax use of perspective for this painting.

I'll answer by saying that I'm aware that it isn't 'right', and neither is the rear wall in relation to the back of the car, or the size of the candlestick in relation to the basket, etc etc. My point was that this is a painting demonstration rather than a geometric maths lesson in perspective which would be quite laborious, anal and boring.

Technical illustrations need accurate strict initial guidelines, paintings don't always, as they evolve and develop as part of the artistic process, otherwise a painting would be reduced to a matter 'colouring in' between rigid lines, something akin to painting by numbers.

No rulers, straight edges, French curves or any other artificial methods of achieving the correct geometry were used when laying in this drawing I simply roughed it in quickly, and neither, as I have previously mentioned, does any of this scene actually exist other than in my minds eye. It has been conjured up, put together and developed entirely from the imagination which explains why it isn't perfect.

Anything that is put down in these early stages, be it colour, tone or indeed perspective is merely an approximation, which is then developed upon as the different painting stages are reached, the areas mentioned are not yet finished, there is much work to do and many alterations still to make. Again that is all part of the painting process, the freedom to add or remove, change or skew is the very thing that artists cherish, those that can't do this are known as 'illustrators'.

And anyway, as the room is imaginary who s to say it wasn't built crookedly?

Don't be put off or riled by opinions of those who *think* they can't be wrong. It's superb and certainly an education for the majority of us, it's as exciting waiting in anticipation for the next installment of the painting as it was the rebuild of your car, and that's a huge compliment, by the way.