Oil Painting Demonstration -- Clew Bay

This is the latest oil painting subject, Clew Bay. I have only just started this and hopefully I will be able to work on it over the next week or so, time permitting. The view is from the beginning of the route up Croagh Patrick, looking north across Clew Bay. In the above, I have sketched the initial scene in cobalt blue as accurately as I could. No I didn't trace!! I just took my time to get everything in the right place! I'm not including the buildings or car-park. I'm using a bit of artistic licence here. Also looks like a big thumbprint on my camera lens, will need to clean it!

Actually last Sunday was the annual pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick and several hundred if not a thousand or more people made the difficult trek to the summit. For the very first time ever, the Irish television network, RTE hauled cables and power and everything up the steep side of this mountain, (quite an effort as it took some days to do this) to allow them broadcast a Mass from the top of the mountain. This happened last Sunday at 10 am.

I climbed the mountain several years ago, with weather similar to the above photo. The view from the top is spectacular and you can see very distant parts of Mayo and down to Clare. The top is flat about the size of a football field but the north slope starts abruptly and is very steep. It is broken rock and scree and impossible to gain a hold on. If you descend onto it from the top, you will just keep sliding painfully down. The route up involves skirting left of this as you climb from the north and reaching the back of the mountain where it is not so bad. There are some sections of scree to climb past however and your foot sinks in among the small stones as you try to ascend. Some pilgrims climb barefoot!! Ouch!! The mountain is known for it's almost exact pyramidal shape, quite unique. Click here, Croagh Patrick to see a painting I did of this mountain from a beach which is to the north west, looking towards it. This was from a slide I took the weekend of my ascent.

Anyway, if people are interested in seeing the progress of this painting, check back to the blog from time to time over the next while... Should be some progress unless I get real busy.
Also, I hope to include a few articles on mixing colours in the blog. Mixing mauves, blues, greens or browns, etc for that just right shade. So sometime soon, I'll get around to that.

If interested, see earlier step by step snow scene painting demonstration.
Tomorrow I think it's time for the poetry corner...