Passing Through - stage 4

 Second colour pass on the sky - I will need another before it's OK. I will know if the lighting is going to work when I get the dark landscape in.

Colours used: Dioxazine Purple, Manganese Blue Hue, Permanent Orange, Naples Yellow Reddish Extra, Warm Light Yellow, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon and Warm White

Passing Through - stage 3

 Well the basic tonal underpainting is finished now so tomorrow I move on to colour, specifically the sky. I was going to paint it with Albert Bierstadt lighting but I'm slightly changing it to be based around pinks, oranges and violets as it is very Hudson River School already and that would have been too obvious.

Passing Through - stage 2

 Worked out the rest of the composition first establishing where things go, quite like the lead-in from the water and rocks on the river. I then did some preliminary washes of tone with a rag and brush to establish the tonal design and then I will finish the tonal underpainting tomorrow. This kind of notan will help me work out the sky and clouds and the sunlit landscape at left but this at least gets across the basic idea of composition and lighting that I originally had. I always saw this one as a Hudson River School feel, an epic imaginary American landscape and while sorting out some reference I decided to set it in the Fall (Autumn) and then later on have decided to base it around oranges, pinks and violets to unify the colour across the whole painting including the sky. It is an imaginary Colorado landscape which is appropriate as it may well be exhibited in a gallery in Denver CO when the series is finished.

Passing Through - Stage 1

 I have now started on the next one in the series after a hiatus of working out how I am going to execute the idea for it. As you can see I am still composing it.... I have an idea in my head for something a bit Hudson River School with a range of dark hills in shadow running for two thirds from the right with mountains in sunlight on the left. It is set in Fall and all the foreground is in shadow which will neatly highlight the campfire by the riverbank (trust me it will be there) which is the whole point of the picture, "Passing Through".

A note on these Winsor & Newton canvases I'm using for this series - I usually like to work on linen which has a finer weave but it is not available in this format so I give them three coats of gesso sanding down between coats to fill in the weave a bit to give a smoother surface. At the moment I am "drawing" it up using a thin hogs hair brush with my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin which I hope to finish tomorrow when final decisions have been made about the landscape at left... hopefully worked out over my breakfast coffee....

Oil on canvas 39" x 16".

Home Sweet Home

 The next in my American Vista series, this title will change to reflect more the ideas behind them when I find the right words to elucidate them! It carries on with the general theme of this series, a human presence within a vast landscape in this case expressed as an endless cold but beautiful forest. Trying to paint something beautiful is beset with problems the main one being trying to avoid mawkishness and sentimentality and is a somewhat tricky tightrope to negotiate....I do not want them to look like a Thomas Kinkade painting!

The previous painting "Samui Fuyu" was in effect a study for this one and I'm glad I did it as I discovered that a new way of painting snow didn't work and mixing white into my basic underpainting mix of Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Sienna produced some lovely desaturated violets that I used in this painting. I'm glad I kept the light area at top right as it provided tonal variety to what could have turned out to be a uniform and possibly drab forest and the yellow/orange in the window pops out nicely but subtly from the mist and again varies the colour in the painting (there are also some hints of green in the foreground trees for colour variety too).

Oil on canvas 39" x 16".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

 

 

Home Sweet Home - stage 7

 Finished all the foreground trees and ready now for the snow and cabin to go in. I did in the end put little hints of green in the nearest tree trunks...

New colours used: Permanent Sap Green and Chromium Green.

Home Sweet Home - stage 6

 I have painted in the foreground trees on the left half and will go on to the other half tomorrow. I'm just having a few thoughts about introducing another colour maybe some green into the tree trunks. I will mull over it over tomorrow morning's breakfast coffee....

Home Sweet Home - stage 5

 Pretty much finished the background trees bar some tweaks when it comes to painting the nearer trees - which will be tomorrow. Leaving it here today so that I can work out how I'm going to do the mid-ground trees over tomorrow's breakfast coffee. I'm glad I left that light area at top right as it gives the painting more variety and hopefully makes it more interesting when it's finished.

Home Sweet Home - stage 4

 

Continuing to work on the background trees, the right half is basically finished for the moment the left half I hope to finish tomorrow.

Already starting to think about the next one in the series, a mountainscape of some kind.....?

Home Sweet Home - stage 3

 At the moment I am working over all of the background trying colours out before I proceed to the wet-in-wet painting for the foreground integrating to the background. Stopped here to assess it tomorrow morning to see if I'm happy with where it's going.

Colours used: Prussian Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange and Warm White.

Home Sweet Home - stage 2

 I decided to make the cabin look more crowded in with trees before I start painting with opaque colour so that I have an idea of the feeling that I want for this picture, the forest is meant to be kind of threatening. As I discovered from the last painting I might not be able to paint this in layers the way I normally do and instead work up each area separately using more wet-in-wet painting as I want it to have a quite painterly feel to it....

 I am also (at the moment) sticking with the idea of the light area at top right like the last painting had as it gives more variety to the tones etc but it also might be counter-ptoductive to the original idea so we shall see....

Home Sweet Home - stage 1

 This is the next in my American Vista series (probably going to be retitled soon) which follows on from the earlier painting "Samui Fuyu" which essentially was a study for this larger painting. I learnt a few things from it including that my idea for a new way of painting snow didn't work but more positively that adding white to the underpainting mix of Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Sienna produced some nice shades of desaturated violets.

This one carries on the theme of a lonely dwelling amidst huge nature which as I have mentioned before carries with it a metaphorical content that I will elucidate clearer when the right words arrive...

This is the initial tonal underpainting stage using my usual mix of Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Sienna thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush.

Oil on canvas 39" x 16".

Samui Fuyu

 As I embark on this new American landscape series the next one will be a cabin in a dark forest for which I had an idea how I could paint the snow covered ground in a different way. I decided that I would do a trial run first with a smaller painting which could double up as my painting for next month's slot on Every Day Original and thought that it would be nice to return to a Japanese theme. As it turned out the new way of painting the ground didn't work so it's just as well I did this trial painting first as it saves me loads of time and grief correcting that on a larger painting. The light area at top right was originally just an afterthought when I was doing the underpainting but as it progressed I liked the almost mystical light it had and decided to make that area lighter and the rest of the painting correspondingly darker to emphasise the lighting. I wanted it to look freezingly cold (Samui Fuyu means Cold Winter in Japanese) which is how it has turned out.

One handy bi-product of this was the discovery of some nice colour mixes based on adding white to the basic underpainting mix of Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Sienna which I may well use on the upcoming widescreen painting.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

Samui Fuyu - stage 3

 Still really hard to get a decent photo of it...

Things have progressed to starting on the foreground snow but stopped here as I don't want to rush it and should have plenty of time tomorrow to finish it, all I have to do is knock back the shrine into the mist a bit and finish off the foreground snow. This painting has in the end served it's original purpose as I contemplate the larger painting and am glad to have discovered that my original idea of painting the snow wouldn't have worked....

Incidentally I have also discovered that adding white to my basic underpainting mix of Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Sienna gives these nice desaturated violets....

New colours used: Yellow Lake Deep and Lead Tin Yellow Lemon

Samui Fuyu - stage 2

 

Not a very good photo of it...

Well surprise surprise, after some initial confusion caused by me liking it when I painted the blue wash over the background I have (or has the painting itself?) decided to change tack and go with the new lighting and colours. The scraping out of branches in the foreground from the snow didn't work so I rubbed it all off and left it like this until tomorrow morning's breakfast coffee when I will look at it again and develop the new lighting.

Colours used so far: Dioxazine Purple, Prussian Blue, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange and Warm White.

Samui Fuyu - stage 1

 I was going to start work on a larger painting of a dark forest in snow trying out a new way of painting the snow but I felt I needed to do a trial piece first. I decided on a Japanese painting which will be for next month's slot on Every Day Original to see if what I have in mind works as I plan on painting the snow over a dark background and scraping out twigs and branches instead of painting them on top (although I suspect that I will do some of that as well). At the moment it looks a bit of a mess but hopefully tomorrow things will make more sense.

This is the basic tonal underpainting using my usual mix of Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Sienna thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

That Was The Year That Was

 Well 2023 is finally over, a mixed bag as always of highs and lows and I suspect '24 will be a bumpier ride still....

Anyway here is a selection of paintings from the 34 that I sold last year. Thank you to everybody that bought one!