On Cloud Nine: expressive sky paintings

Rebecca Vincent monotype landscape painting trees on the horizon with big expressive sky — On the Horizon | image size 33 x 51cm | NOW SOLD

Over the Christmas holidays and New Year, I've been working on these moody skies monotypes. I'd been feeling frustrated with the slow pace of my work so it felt great to be working in a more expressive, swift style, trying out variations on a theme. These nine new expressive sky paintings (monotypes) plus one smaller prototype) are now available.

Rebecca Vincent Survivors expressive sky paintings monotype red black orange trees on hill top copse — Survivors | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

I've been working in monotype for 30 years but I'm still making discoveries and developing new ways of working. In this series, I'm using translucent oily ink that moves around easily and is extrememly sensitive to marks made with a cloth. I can get lovely wispy cloud effects with a very light touch. I was aiming to create skies with a brooding but beautiful light with plenty of energy and vitality. I even put on some pop music to get my whole body moving!

Rebecca Vincent Sky Line expressive skies painting monotupe red orange black trees on horizon — Sky Line | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

You can watch a video of me printing the skies on YouTube - edited to just 55 seconds!

This video has had a huge response on Facebook with the most views and likes I've ever had on a video. People's comments are quite varied (many of them artists and art students) with some appreciating that, what looks to be relatively simple, takes a lot of experience to execute. Others seem a bit mystified as to what was special about the medium. "Wouldn't this be easier with paint?" they ask. And "Why go to so much trouble?"

Rebecca Vincent The Sky's the Limit expressive sky painting monotype red black stormy clouds trees on hill top — The Sky's the Limit | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

I'll tell you why! Because the subtle and expressive negative mark-making is unique to the medium and it would be very difficult to replicate in any other way. Monotype has a soft translucency and richness of colour that are quite distinctive. You can read more about how I came to love the special properties of printmaking in this blog post.

Rebecca Vincent Expand Your Horizons expressive sky painting monotype red black trees along the horison — Expand Your Horizons | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

With this series, I return to one of my favourite themes: big expressive skies with land and tree lines which link the two and add detail and focus to the image. I like the way really small trees give a sense of the overwhelming scale of the sky. By working in series like this, I can be more efficent (using one batch of colours for a number of pieces) and also more experimental as I try out a lot of different versions.

Rebecca Vincent expressive sky painting monotype conifer trees on hills sunset At First Light — At First Light | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

What keeps me coming back to monotype skies is the way the two (or sometimes three) layers of colour interact. If you get the colours just right they seem to vibrate together and emit their own light. I'm always chasing this perfect interaction of colour and it always seems just out of reach! Sometimes I get really, really close and I'm almost satisfied!

Rebecca Vincent expressive sky painting monotype dark clouds trees on a hill grey gold orange Under a cloud — Under a Cloud | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

These ones use Payne's Grey (a blue/black ink) for the main substance of the image over graded translucent colours. I wanted to break down the process to it's most basic level so I could focus on pure mark-making. I would like to develop this further to include recogniseable elements like castles and rocks. That will be for the next series!

Rebecca Vincent expressive sky painting monotype dark clouds trees on a hill grey gold orange — Calm Before the Storm | image size 33 x 51cm | £395 unmounted | £420 mounted | £520 framed in oak or black with art glass

I'm one of these people who wants to try out every possible combination of colours to see what they all do, so this feels like the first step in a much longer colour exploration. As you will know, I've been printing skies in monotype for a long time but I still feel I'm only scratching the surface of what is possible. I've been looking a the amazing monotypes of Bill Jackin and would really like to attempt some of the fluid mark-making and translucent light effects that he uses - applied to my own subject matter of course.

Rebecca Vincent expressive sky painting trees along the horizon monotype painting — Huddled | image size 41 x 30.5 cm | £295 unmounted | £315 mounted | £395 framed in oak or black with art glass

The smaller one above was a test piece for the colours, marks and technique. It's always a good idea to make a prototype when changing your usual colour palette and approach. It saves time and paper!