The first painting to be started on and finished, is an oil painting on a 38x46 cm (or F8) canvas on a frame. The reference photo was irresistible, providing me with challenges as well as speaking to some of my strengths.
I started out by sketching the outlines, managing reasonably well, and then began by painting the mountains roughly. I couldn't resist spending quite some time on them, before moving on to the grasses. A lot of raw umber and ochre colours were used. The sky was what I painted last, technically at least - I then went back and touched up both here and there, first and foremost in the area of the dark hills that actually had, as I noticed, a few flecks of sunlight in spots I hadn't hitherto noticed. And so it was out with the ochre again, and both working in almost-dried paint, and drybrushing.
I allowed this painting to dry for a few days during one stage, and left it alone for short periods of time too. I do love working wet in wet, but it needed to be left to dry for some details.
I am very pleased with the snow on the mountains, but it was very tricky to get the snow amongst the grass quite right. The photo doesn't do the painting justice, even if it does manage to catche some of the suble colour change in the sky, for example.
The reference photo is of the mountains of An Teallach (meaning, most likely, "Forge" or perhaps "Anvil" in Scots Gaelic), in Dundonell, in Scotland. They are very beautiful.
But this painting does not end there, I'm afraid. As I painted, I knew I wanted to incorporate something of a slightly more fantasy nature, and indeed, it would have felt unfinished had I neglected to do so. So there, in the left side of the painting, there is a someone and a horse, walking along.
Therefore, the painting is called what it is called - "Ered Luin, or An Teallach with a visitor." For what would that pointy-hatted old man do there, in Scotland? Not that I'd mind meeting him, of course.
The Ered Luin are also known as the Blue Mountains, and once stood east of Beleriand, though where that lay is now only the sea. Instead, we must look to the east of the Ered Luin, and notice, perhaps, the river Lhûin which flows into the sea at the Grey Havens, Mithlond.
"Even as the first shadows were felt in the Mirkwood there appeared in the west of Middle-Earth the Istari, whom Men called the Wizards. None knew at that time whence they came, save Círdan of the Havens, and only to Elrond and to Galadriel did he reveal that they came over the Sea." ("The Silmarillion", J.R.R. Tolkien, p 359)
And so, the parallell was an easy one to draw upon. But most of all, I am plain happy with a very good nature painting, which conveys some of the incredible beauty of a land I love.
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