After The Rain

Sometimes the most beautiful things are right under our feet. After The Rain began on a muddy woodland walk in Berkshire, looking down into puddles that almost everyone else was splashing straight through.

Materials

• Acrylic paint
• Sand and texture paste
• Imitation gold leaf
• Diamond dust
• Satin and high gloss varnish
• 24 x 24 inch stretched cotton canvas, standard depth (2 cm)

A Whole World in a Puddle

It had rained earlier in the day, and the woodland path was thick with mud and dotted with puddles. The mud was printed all over with footprints: walking boots, dogs' paws, and the deep half-moon shapes of horses' hooves.

I didn't see the horses that made those hoof prints, so I can only guess where they came from, possibly a local riding school. Walking along these paths, you sometimes meet one or two riders on big, powerful horses, and other times a group of six or seven, with a couple of instructors and children on smaller horses.

It was the puddles that stopped me. The sky was in every one of them, brilliant and sparkling, with the trees reflected upside down. Tiny insects were busy around the edges, and every so often a bird would drop in for a bath. A whole world seemed to be living in and around those puddles.

People and dogs kept stomping straight through them without a second glance. It got me thinking about how important water is to all life as we know it, and about the stories and journeys of everyone who had passed that way, leaving their footprints in the mud and never noticing what each puddle contained.

Puddles that inspired the painting.

 

Planning the Composition

I looked through lots of the photographs I had taken of puddles, then designed the composition by making a number of tiny pencil sketches. I chose the one I liked best and sketched it onto the canvas in pencil. I didn't copy any particular photograph; I used them to get a feel for how I wanted my puddles to look. The composition came as much from memory and my own interpretation as from the photos.

 

Making the Mud

This was the messy, fun part! I mixed sand with acrylic paint and texture paste and applied it thickly with a palette knife to form the mud, leaving the puddles uncovered. I built up the texture with the knife, then pressed real horseshoes into the wet mixture to emboss hoof prints, just like the ones I'd seen on the path. The horseshoes themselves came from my partner Neil's garden, where they hang on his shed, held on with garden wire. I've no idea where they came from originally, but they were very happy to step in and make their mark!

The mud was so thick it took over a week to dry.

Hoof prints embossed with a real horseshoe.

Changing My Mind About the Water

I mixed the colours for the mud from burnt umber, ultramarine and yellow. My first idea for the puddles was a setting sun, so I painted them in oranges and yellows. But when I stood back, I didn't like orange water at all. It didn't look like the puddles I'd seen. So I repainted them in sky blue and white, and moved those warm oranges and yellows into the mud instead, which suited it much better.

Once that was dry, I went back over the mud with a brush, picking out the texture of the sand and paste in contrasting yellows and oranges.

 

Gold at the Water's Edge

When everything was dry, I added a thin line of imitation gold leaf around the edge of each puddle. It marks where the mud ends and the water begins, but it also links the two together, because in that woodland the mud and the water were really one little world.

 

Making the Puddles Shine

I varnished the mud with satin varnish, making it look damp, and gave the puddles a high gloss varnish, so they shine and reflect the light the way water does. Then I added diamond dust to the puddles. As you walk past the painting, they sparkle, just as water sparkles when the sun shines through it from behind.

The sparkle is subtle in photographs, where you might catch one or two bright pinpoints, but on video you can see it moving across the water. 

 

A Study in Copper

Once the painting was finished, I made a small study on watercolour paper, using watercolour washes, pen and black ink, copper leaf, varnish and diamond dust. I wanted to see how the puddles would look edged in copper instead of gold.

I really enjoyed making it. The copper gives the puddles a lovely warm glow, softer and cosier than the gold. Seeing the two side by side also showed me why the gold works so well in the main painting: it gives a stronger contrast between the mud and the water, and that sharper edge helps the puddles shine.

Making it also got me thinking about how I work. Some of my paintings grow on the canvas: I begin with an idea and let the painting develop as I go, and that spontaneity often gives the work a freshness I could never plan. Others, like After The Rain, are much more structured, with clear areas of land and water shaped by texture. Paintings like these lend themselves beautifully to small studies, where I can try out colours and metals before committing to a large canvas. I'm already thinking about a series of small puddle studies, with the strongest ones becoming larger paintings.

Study for After The Rain

A Little Different for Me

After The Rain is a little unusual for me. Most of my paintings come from how water feels, but this one is more about what I saw. It's semi-abstract, and you can definitely recognise the puddles and the hoof prints, but I hope it still carries some of the feeling of standing on that path, looking down into a world most people walk straight through.

 

What Do You See?

I'd love to know what this painting brings to mind for you. Does it remind you of a walk of your own, or a place you love? And next time you're out after the rain, I hope you'll stop and look down.

After The Rain in a room setting.

Own This Painting

After The Rain is a mixed media original painting on stretched canvas, 24 x 24 inches (61 x 61 cm), incorporating acrylic paint, sand, texture paste, imitation gold leaf and diamond dust. It's signed, varnished and ready to hang, and comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.

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You might also enjoy: Liquid Woodland, another painting that began on a winter woodland walk.