New painting "Ballylin"

My new painting

Last April or May, I decided to start a new painting as I hadn’t painted anything or made any art since I was in BCFE a few years ago. As I may have said in some of my earlier posts, BCFE is a fantastic world renowned college and I will always be grateful that I was given a chance to go there, as part of a back to education year, were I did Art, Mixed media and design. It was brilliant to learn about art, painting, printing, drawing, photography and sculpture. I was supposed to go forward to NCAD, https://www.ncad.ie/ and get a degree or doctorate, but I just could not afford to. When you have a mortgage to pay, and no more savings in your bank account, you have to knock those dreams on the head.  I always had an interest in art, but just did not get the chance to do any, although, in fairness I think this is why I went down the career road of becoming a cabinetmaker and truthfully, cabinetmaking is an art. ANYWAY! I think I am starting to ramble a bit. So here is the BCFE website that will show you the college and the kind of work they do which includes the Irish college of animation. Also a few Academy Awards or Oscars have been received by past students who credit the college. 

http://www.bcfe.ie/  please check it out.

I planned to do a painting of the bird’s eye view of the Town land of Ballylin, which is outside the town of Ramelton in Co. Donegal Ireland. One of the things I learned in BCFE, is that good planning and research make all the difference. So with my sketchbook and the help of Google maps and also the Ordanance Survey Ireland website. I spent countless hours studying and finding out how I was going to complete my project. I also looked at some very old maps from the 1830’s which was way before there was a Ballylin road, as this road was built during the famine of 1845-1852. It was built as part of a famine relief scheme in which the workers would get a bowl of porridge for their days labour. In fairness it was pure exploitation of the indigenous Irish peasant, but I suppose it was at least something. I often wonder how many people died, when they built the Ballylin road, and also were they are buried. In those days (during the famine) the bodies would have been buried in either a mass grave or just buried in a field with no ceremony or even something to mark the grave. This would not be uncommon throughout Ireland at the time and almost exclusively affected the indigenous Irish catholic peasant . It has always been rumoured that there is a mass grave in our orchard at the back of our home in Ballylin. However, after digging drains and even building septic tanks, we have never found anything, thank God.

ANYWAY

So, back to the painting that I started in April or May. I first bought a small side table from Ikea, as I wanted to use the top as my canvas. It was a LACK side table in white and was only €4.99 when I bought it. I’m sorry I did not buy a few of them as they have gone way up in price and also they make brilliant square canvases. Instead of putting the legs on the table, I sanded the whole thing and then painted it with white artists primer. I got to say that paints and primer were very costly and pushed my budget up to way over 100 euro, if not more. So a bill or two didn't get paid and some meals didn't get eaten due to not having the money to buy food at the time. But sacrifices should always be made for art, in my opinion.
 I have to say, the white artist primer is fantastic and well worth using if you’re going to do a painting. I also downloaded a few low resolution satellite maps of Ballylin, and picked the best one to base my painting on. The one I chose was filmed in 2007 and I am sure it was early summer as you can clearly see that the silage has been harvested from some of the fields. Just to let anyone that does not know, silage is fresh sweet grass that is cut and stored for winter, to feed cattle and sheep. It used to be kept in a kind of bunker or three sided pit, and would be compacted and covered for the winter. Now the silage is compacted into large round bales that are wrapped in plastic to keep it fresh. These new bales turn out to be a far better way of keeping the silage, as the old silage pit used to collect all the liquid which would sometimes work its way into rivers and kill the fish. OH! Sorry, I'm starting to ramble again.

Because the landscape juts out in the sea, I decided to make the picture with an acrylic paste and build it up like a 3D picture, almost like a model, but still a painting. 

I used masking tape to make a border or frame and then I built up the landscape and sea with layers of acrylic paste, using different textures to highlight fields and woodlands. I then marked out all the fields as accurate to the Google map as possible. The sea and landscape was built up in different colours and textures and there was no solid colours used at all.

I then outlined the road and fields with the paste and then started to build up the colours.

With continued layering of colours and textures, I was able to bring the landscape to life.

This is the painting almost finished, although I was not happy with it. I painted the frame to look like verdigris copper, but felt it didn’t look good so I painted it white. 

                      The painting is called Ballylin. 

After a few more adjustments, which included a yellow wash, which gives the greens more life, and the addition of some fine detail, I think the painting is finished. 

I was still unhappy with the frame, so I gave it a distressed antique look. I ended up painting the frame in a distressed soiled white, as a reminder of the lives lost to build this road. A soiled white as the powers at the time, had no real interest in helping these people and just exploited them to get the road built. When the famine victims died, they would be buried and covered in quick lime which would also have a soiled white appearance. 

My idea at the time was to do three paintings of Ballylin, one from pre famine 1830's, the current painting 2012ish, and one from what I think Ballylin would look like a 100 years from now. 
It took me between 3 and 4 months to do this painting, including the endless hours of research, so I honestly don't think I will ever get the time to do the other two paintings. I am still looking for work at this stage and I am heavily in debt. But I am confident I will find a job.

If anyone has any suggestions, how I should finish the frame, please let me know.