First day in the studio. I'm really pleased with it. There is a good-sized window.
I printed out a picture I'd taken earlier in the week of an old man staring out of a train window.
He seems to be staring out at a colour blur. It made me realise something obvious, that when you look out of a train window, your eye sees what is there as a continuous view. But in a photograph, the view is blurred to a horizontal rush of colour.
I created a grid which I find helps me to place the image on the canvas. I started with a grey-white underlayer, after I had sketched out the face.
I want the inside of the train to be monotone and the outside world to be colour.
Black and white seems best to represent the tired quality of routine inside the carriage. Hard lines etched in the face, hard surfaces, coldness, an exhausted light.
In contrast, what's outside seems alive, warm and vivid - but it also seems to lack a firm shape, as if it is both beautiful and unreal.
