Yesterday I was out in the woods. I like to sit amongst the trees and paint, with the little bugs running up and down my legs and the breeze wafting the branches of the trees to its own special rhythm. It was a sunny morning, and I had with me my new camera, so I decided to take a picture of the painting as it progressed.
I started with pencil, having an idea that I wanted to keep a white circle of light in the top right-hand corner:
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| Pencil underdrawing |
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| A mix of light yellow and sap green for the light on the leaves, putting in shadows with Payne's Grey |
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| Close up view of the green and gray. I use water to get tonal range |
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| Working in a further level, Payne's gray admixture with the other two colours |
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| I work into the trees with Raw Umber and Burnt Umber . The next step is to get rid of all of the white where I don't want it. |
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I use blues. This can look a little startling as you do it, but it will not all be so dazzling in the end.
I don't want it to be all green. |
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| I use oxide of chromium to damp down the dancing blues and work on achieving the tonal balance. |
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| Finally a mixture of rose madder and ultramrine will go into the trees to change the hue. I like to put a little purple in at the end. |
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| This is a photo of the same view. |
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| This is my paintbox. |
You answered both my question posed on another post, these are your paintings, and my next question, in the field you use both tubes and pans (I've been using the latter but the colours are often too thin). Ok next, what later are you using in the field,rough or smooth. I ask because as you'll have seen, I find this a challenge so learning from orhers' experiences is helpful. I like the long thin structure of many of your paintings.
ReplyDeleteOne criticism, you post many of your painting as thumbnails but I want to see them properly!
Glad to have found your blog.
Kestrel,
ReplyDeleteSorry about the small scale of some of the images. I don't have a great internet connection and I get tired of waiting for images to upload so I tend to reduce them with Picture Manager before sticking them on the blog. I have a lot more work that I don't put up on blogs of course.
I use pans and tubes. If you use good quality pans the colours should not be too thin. That means forking out unfortunately. Winsor and Newton artist quality colours are pretty expensive, but the difference with student quality is worth the extra price. You can work with a very limited range of colours and mix all your greys if you prefer to work that way. Some technique snobs say that is the only way to go, but I disagree: I say that anything that gets the result you want is OK.
For sketchbooks I use moleskine watercolour pads. For loose paper I am using up some Bockingford 300gsm paper that I bought in bulk. You don't need to stretch it for sketching purposes, though I would if I were going to do something in that non-existent studio I pine for.
Keep in touch. It is good to talk to other artists!