Painting process | End of the Day at the Bottom of the Eyre Peninsula

1 Apr

The Eyre Peninsula in South Australia has such a wild, isolated beauty. I was staying on a farm right at its tip, where it felt like we were the only people in the world. I went for a walk to look for emus at dusk as the moon was rising. The way the final rays of sun made the distant paddocks golden orange was so striking under the grey-blue sky. The sliver of The Bight that I could see in the distance glowed a surreal blue. I knew I wanted to capture this moment in paint.

This painting was a challenge in subtlety. There are no cast shadows, no super dark darks or bright highlights. It’s all about quiet stillness created through careful variation in colour temperature and compressed values.

You can watch the full time-lapse by clicking the image above.

Preliminary sketches and studies

I started with a quick pencil sketch to work out the composition. I rearranged the moon to place it at the end of the track. The curve of the track pulls your eye in to the distance.

Next, I painted these little value studies to define the value relationships. This scene requires compressed values, with nothing at either end of the scale.

I then did these little colour studies. I abandoned the first one when I realised I’d put the horizon line too low!

Finally, I did a much larger colour sketch. I picked out blues, pinks and yellows in the foreground grasses that are reflected from the sky.

The painting process

This was the start of the painting, where I placed the big shapes of the painting in using burnt sienna paint.

Here is the first finished layer. It’s rough, and busy. But this first layer lets me then compare relationships to refine them.

I began adding shape and variation in the grass. I noticed that the left side of the grasses capture the golden glow of the sun, just as the pinks and yellows in the sky on this side are warmer. On the right the grass reflects more of the blues from the sky. I started picking these colours out at this stage.

I wasn’t sure how to treat texture in this painting. At first, I went with a textured, interesting sky and softer grasses. But here is where I decided to swap this relationship. I started to soften the gradient in the sky and build up texture in the grass. This choice creates a feeling of stillness in the painting by getting rid of the busyness in the sky. Adding more variation in the grasses helps create depth, with the detail gradually dissolving as it recedes.

I spent a long time working on the foreground curve of the road. I softened the edges and pushed the texture so it feels like it sits down in the grass. I layered so many strokes of different colours to create tire tracks through the grass that overlap believably. It was a balancing act of creating the illusion of grass texture without literally painting every stalk of grass.

Finished!

"End of the Day at the Bottom of the Eyre Peninsula"

80×60cm, oil on linen

This painting really threw me out of my comfort zone. It made me slow down and really observe the subtle shifts I’d noticed that evening. I loved capturing the way warm and cool tones interact without drama.