"Men and dogs”-70 X 90 cm, £1775
I could not leave this alone, maybe recollections of collective masochism drove me to add the rain into this picture of a sudden Surrey shower. These gents have obviously been summoned to move to a new location as they head off chatting to each other while the dogs trot to heel. None of them paying any heed to the swirling leaves and rain.
As ever, I have left elements of the figures exit the edge of the canvas. This picture evolved once I took it from the sketch to canvas. The sketch itself defined the men as a solid group, set against a slanting near horizontal band of dark grey. I amused myself by imagining how I might look in such a group. I won’t say which of the five might be me.
The narrative focus of the composition, the line of men, was my starting point, unified by all being painted in variations of olive green and Prussian Blue, which I punctuated with the red and dark brown of the canvas and leather gunslips. I had to warn myself not to get too literal by incorporating detail. I had fun abusing them by making them all grey haired and making two of them very red faced – weather beaten – I think they would prefer to be called, rather than well lubricated.
I had not anticipated making the top line of paint so yellow. I had thought to make it grey, again tripping into being too literal but the season asserted itself and I painted horizontal sloping stripes of yellow then broke it up with patches of green. The hedge started out as a simple band of Terre Verte into which I scratched some broad lines to indicate branches. The broadness was consistent with the graphic scale of the piece.
The bottom band would be read as grass, so I painted it in horizontal bands enlivened by vertical brushing. When this was semi dry, I worked in some bands of olive green, angled up from right to left.
I then eliminated the white lines of residual visible canvas, because they were so grey. You can see how grey by looking at the men’s’ collars. I first used coloured outlines in “Same old, same old”. The cat had been outlined in Cerulean Blue in “Sitting in the garden” and I decided to use it again here for the “shadow side”. That meant the “lit side” would be the opposite, an orangey yellow. I applied this to the men and the dogs.
I then used some of this colour to paint swirling leaves in the yellow band on the grass bands and in the hedge, as quick wrist flicks of colour of different sizes. Finally, I added some white to this base and dragged the “rain” across the canvas.
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