Red Lantern Street - stage 3

 First colour pass on the background today using desaturated blue/green mixes and kind of making it up as I go along. I stopped here so that I can look at it in the morning with fresh eyes and see how it is going and what to do next. I need dark tones around the red lanterns so that they glow...

Red Lantern Street - stage 2

 

Busy day today and only managed to get two washes of desaturated blue/green over the cold areas.

Colours used: Phthalocyanine Blue, Phthalocyanine Green and Permanent Orange.

Red Lantern Street - stage 1

 Kind of a first for me, a Chinese-themed painting. A combination of imagination and a memory of the lanterns in London's Chinatown at Chinese New Year. Seeing as they are red (and therefore dark)  they will be set against the darker areas of the painting to give them a chance to glow. As I want a soft dreamy look I have painted in the vast majority of the underpainting with a rag. Tomorrow I will give most of the painting a wash of desaturated blue apart from the warm areas of lights and hopefully make a start on the background too.

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

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

The Portal

 The second painting resulting from my recent tour around the National Parks in the South West of the USA is again another fantasy oriented painting. I saw the central tree in a sequoia grove in Yosemite the shape of which immediately suggested something a bit Lord Of The Rings initially but when I got back to the UK I decided it would be more interesting as a portal. I added the figure as I felt it needed a sense of scale. 

This painting will be exhibited at IX in mid October in Reading PA.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

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

The Portal - stage 3

 Finished the background and painted in the portal after deciding to go for warm yellows and oranges. I think I will need a figure walking towards the portal to give it a a sense of scale...

The Portal -stage 2

 A poor pic of the background nearly finished, it's bluer than this but the camera didn't pick it up. Stopped here because I need to make a decision on the colours inside the portal as they will affect the reflections in the foreground so on to tomorrow morning's breakfast coffee....

Colours used so far: Phthalocyanine Blue, Indanthrene Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange, Lead Tin Yellow Lemon and Warm White.

The Portal - stage 1

 This is another painting coming out of my recent trip around the National Parks in Southwest USA and is based on a tree I saw in Yosemite in a sequoia grove. Looking at it now I am just wondering if I need to put in a silhouetted figure in the light to give it the right sense of scale... needn't decide yet but probably...

This is the tonal underpainting stage which has had a wash of a desaturated mix of Phthalocyanine Blue and Permanent Orange over the basic underpainting using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush.

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".