Moon Over Suburbia

 

I was driving home one evening when I spotted the moon and thought "I'm going to paint you tonight." I had a long canvas and thought I'd put the easy moon at the top. What would be below would be the arduous bit. I wasn't sure what to do. I put on the television and started doodling with a pencil - drawing boxes and triangles. Nothing formed but I'd been walking up on high hills that weekend and stopped to look down at the town as it lit up.  It's was all roofs and chimneys and street lamps. I started again, pencilling in roofs and gable end walls. Things started to improve. I painted in a couple of streets and wondered how far up to go. I didn't want to paint in a whole town so I left the middle of the canvas to fill with clouds. I got so carried away I didn't take any photos at first.

 

How do you paint clouds tinged with moonlight? Clearly from the painting I don't know either. I'm sure there're Youtube tutorials showing exactly what to do but I couldn't be bothered looking (it would hamper the flow.) As you can see I smeared on a dark sky and using oil paints filled it up with lots of curly clouds. For some reason I'd swapped mediums and the top part of the canvas was done in oil paints and the bottom in acrylics. The top part was glossy and the bottom part was matt. I sprayed the whole thing to unify it. It seemed to work. I'm sure Earth would be more interesting if we had more moons. Saturn has about 80.

 

I'm sure you could find a shady alcove in your house in which to hang this canvas. I'm also sure you have £18,022 under a rug or mattress to buy this one. Normally it would be £22 but I was in a porcelain shop  and head butted a pesky fly out of the way. My head struck an £18,000 Ming vase which smashed to the floor and now I'm having to pay for it. I can post this painting off to you tomorrow after my neighbour's been round to sample my Pecan butterballs.