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....