Glencoe misshap

A while ago, I had a craving for a panoramic painting. I usually stay within the same 3:4 ratio for all of my oil paintings, whatever their size, but I wanted to create something different, something that would really give you a feel for the vastness and endlessness of the Scottish Highlands.

I find myself coming back to majestic Glencoe over and over again, always changing, ever epic.

My mood seemed to match the landscape and I was in this perfect place every painter strives for where you somehow work in flow without overthinking the composition and the colours. In one sitting I got the underpainting and the first layer of colours onto the canvas and was perfectly happy about how it was shaping up.

Unfortunately, like with everything in life, not everything always goes as planned.

I hadn’t properly fixed the canvas on the easel to let the upper part of the painting dry without the easel touching the wet paint and it fell onto a corner of a table, slicing right through the canvas.

I guess this is fixable rip but given how far along I was with the painting, I decided the only thing to be done was to start again from scratch. If you repair a tear like that carefully, it doesn't show, but the stretched canvas will remain weakened and there is no real way of getting rid of the risk of it ripping again in the same place. The only thing to do is pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again! So that is what I did.

To my surprise, the second try was as successful as the first and I not only got on as fast as the first time, but I even managed to improve on the colours this time!

Funny, how sometimes on has to start again in order to get things just right. And funny how when sometimes we think, we already are the best version of ourselves, we still can do it better - one has simply to try hard and believe that perfection is always possible!

Hope you enjoyed peeking behind the scenes and discovering my work in progress!