Butte States - stage 5

I gave the sky a second pass of colour and hope to finish it tomorrow. Later in the day I put in some tonal underpainting detail into the landscape itself - I can see already that there needs to be good variety of colour within the sandstone landscape and will plan accordingly.

Butte States - stage 4

Today I painted the first colour pass on the sky. In the old days as an illustrator if there was a blue sky I just airbrushed a gradation of something like layers of acrylic Phthalocyanine Blue from dark at the top to light at the bottom. Now I work in oils I like to have more variety of colour in the sky so there are greens and purples there too, all modified by dashes of Permanent Orange to take the saturation down a bit as well as to have some of the land colour in the sky for harmony of colour across the painting. "As above so below" being the motto for this way of using colour.
The paint mixes are made up of Zinc White, Manganese Blue, Phthalocyanine Blue, Kings Blue Light, Emerald Green, Manganese Violet, Permanent Orange and Lemon Yellow - mostly Michael Harding paints with a couple by Winsor and Newton.

Butte States - stages 1 to 3

Stage 1

I am happy to report that I am now based permanently at home after two years of living between here and my elderly parent's house in Leicester. I have moved them to within five minutes walk of where I live and can consequently get on better with my work, mainly in the mornings. This means that I can get back to posting pretty much daily updates on paintings in progress etc.
"Butte States" is conceived as a companion piece to "City of the Sky People" in that it's another fantasy landscape painted in relatively real colours. This one is an imagination of a South West American desert landscape such as New Mexico whereby each mesa and butte is an individual city state kind of like there were in Italy in the 1500s, each one fortified with towers etc - sort of a futuristic Medieval fantasy landscape/cityscape!
Stage 1 was "drawn" up with a small bristle brush using a mix of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with Liquin and turpentine.
Stage 2 has a layer of the same paint mix applied to the landscape with a flat brush and rag as the beginning of the tonal underpainting.
Stage 3 has the sky painted in by giving the whole area a wash of Burnt Sienna and Winsor Violet thinned with a lot of turpentine and then areas for the white clouds erased by a rag dipped in turpentine. A second layer of the paint mix has also been added to the the landscape.

Stage 2

Stage 3

City of the Sky People

The third in a series of sky-based paintings, in this one I intended to paint a more naturalistic sky and landscape but with much more of a Fantasy content so I came up with this: an imaginary city set in a cold and desolate landscape against a big sky, this time painted in more naturalistic colours than the previous one. The river meanders are influenced by Cuckmere Haven, an iconic landscape half an hour away from where I live in East Sussex UK. I think I've channeled  a battleship's conning tower for the city!
The lighting developed as I went along with the decision to have the distance in sunlight only happening near the end of the painting. It's quite a busy painting but composed with the Rule of Thirds used in the placement of the different elements. The composition is a series of checks and balances of light and dark areas against each other, trying to get as much movement as I can into the painting particularly helped by the sweeping river meanders.
I try to make my landscapes as dramatic/dynamic as I can unless I want an atmosphere of stillness. One of the reasons that I am doing sky-based paintings is that I feel I need to improve in this area and am already thinking about ideas for the next one, cloud-based again as I enjoy doing them.
I hope to take this to IX in Reading PA later this year.
30" x 20" oil on linen.
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in earlier posts on this blog.

City of the Sky People - stage 11

This is just what I have managed to do this morning before being away from the studio back on Thursday. Progress has been slow due to more of my time being spent on moving my elderly parents to a flat near where I live. 
I like the effect of sunlight on the more distant landscape where I haven't worked on much yet and have decided to keep it like that and make most of the foreground in shadow to provide contrast and a better sense of distance. I had originally seen it as a more sombre cold landscape but I like that sunlight in the distance which I think gives the painting a more optimistic feel than originally intended! Still not happy with the water...

City of the Sky People - stage 10

As I am in the middle of trying to move my elderly parents near to where I live this is taking time away from painting so there is limited progress from the last stage. I am still painting the meander landscape and must admit to struggling with the reflections in the river. I have at least reestablished the focus of the painting being the city against the sky by knocking back the contrast between the river meanders and the land, the meanders were very strong shapes that were dominating the picture.

City of the Sky People - stage 9

I didn't get as much work done this time as I hoped but have made a start on the meanders as they are dominating the picture at the moment and are proving somewhat distracting. I am painting them in with less contrast against the land so that they recede a bit and not overpower the painting. Once I have the meanders and distant landscape sorted out I can finish the right side of the painting although I will leave the meander on that side until the end as it it has to reflect whatever I work out for the approaching ridge.