MATERIALS
• Gessoed Canvas 36cm x 24cm
• Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour: – Winsor Red – Burnt Umber*
• Art Spectrum Artists’ Oil Colour:- Permanent Mauve – Cadmium Yellow Light – Lemon Yellow* – Burnt Sienna* – Zinc White – Titanium White
• Langridge Underpainting Medium
• Langridge Painting Medium
• Brushes:- Hog Bristle Filberts size 6 – Hog Bristle Bright size 8 – Hog Bristle Flat sizes 1 & 2 – Hog Bristle Fan size 2 – Hog Bristle Round size 1 & 2 – Synthetic Sable Rigger size 0
• Palette knives with 5cm & 6cm blades
*used in underpainting only
STEP ONE
A drawing is made directly on the canvas with a mix of Permanent Mauve and Zinc White, thinned down with fast drying Underpainting Medium. This is done using a size 6 filbert brush. The drawing is very thin and loose, concentrating on placing the major elements in the approximate positions. No attention is given to detail.
Guide lines that describe arcs and specific angles are used to help with placing elements correctly in relation to each other.
The major forms are loosely described with simple geometric shapes such as ovals and triangles.
This is a very “soft” start, allowing for an easy developmental path into the painting. Nothing is locked in so corrections and refinements can be made organically as the painting progresses.
STEP TWO
Now the initial drawing is strengthened using slightly darker colours. The soft blues of the first step give us a guide to develop the drawing against and virtually disappear into the background as we progress. Some key horizon elements and tree contours are marked in but not too much.
For these darker marks, a mix of Permanent Mauve and Burnt Sienna is used.
These colours are all applied quite thinly with Underpainting Medium. Use enough medium so that the paint is thin and transparent but not so much that you can’t paint thin lines without the paint spreading out.
Foliage and ground areas that will be in shadow are lightly shaded with a wash of the Burnt Sienna Permanent Mauve mix. Foliage areas that will be in direct sunlight are filled with a soft wash of Lemon Yellow and Burnt Sienna. The two can be brought together in places to suggest some shadowing on the rounded bushes.
The foreground sunlit area is given a thin wash of Lemon Yellow and Winsor Red.
Economical Lemon Yellow is used in the underpainting because it is fast drying and transparent, unlike the almost identical but much more expensive colour Cadmium Yellow Light, which will be used in the upper visible layers of paint where its slow drying, opacity, mixing strength and light fastness make it a much better choice.
At the end of this step we have a reasonably accurate drawing, and a guide as to where the major elements in the painting are. Also we have an indication of which areas are in light or shadow. So there is a lot of information here for us to progress with but it is still all quite soft and fuzzy. There is nothing that can’t be freely developed or adjusted with ease as we continue.
STEP THREE
This is the last step in the underpainting process.
This is the time to start developing focus and one of the primary means of doing that is with values and contrasts.
The part of the painting with the most impact will be the sections where the main tree meets the horizon and below that where the two front bushes meet the foreground. It is at these two points where the highest contrasts will be and they will be joined together.
This is a vibrant painting and so the value contrasts need to be extreme. The lightest lights will be almost as high value as pure white out of the tube and the darkest darks will be only a step or two above black.
These underpainting darks are mixes of Burnt Umber with a little Winsor Red and Permanent Mauve. They will tend towards purple but a lot of Burnt Umber will knock that down and make it dry really fast.If it’s too purple, a touch of Lemon Yellow in the mix will neutralize it.
Start by putting the darkest darks on the lower mass of the main tree. They should be almost black. Then work them down between and under the two front bushes. Keep the darks reasonably neutral with not too much red or blue. From that centre section, darks one or two points up the value scale are worked out through the rest of the painting.
That takes care of the darkest dark and the other dark values relative to that. The lightest light on the painting will be the lower sky and that will be placed in the next step so that can be left for now.
In order to finish mapping out the underpainting and covering up all the bare canvas, some Permanent Mauve and Zinc White are used to thinly wash in the sky masses, describing where the lighter cloud sections will be. The lower sky is a lighter tint of the foreground mix. Use some of the sky blue to reserve a triangle of space for the large rock in the right foreground.
There is no need to be too fussy or precious about anything done up to this point. Everything painted so far is there as a guide only and will be completely covered up in the next steps.
STEP FOUR
The paints used in the underpainting were thin, mostly transparent and fast drying. Now we shift to using a limited palette of Winsor Red, Permanent Mauve, Cadmium Yellow Light and Titanium White. All other paints used so far are put away as they are no longer needed. Underpainting Medium is replaced with the slower drying and fatter Painting Medium.
This three colour limited palette plus white will enable the mixing of strong moody mauve blues for a melodramatic feel and a vibrant, happy range of reds, yellows, oranges and spring greens to contrast.
Paint is applied generously with thick juicy strokes that leave raised brush marks and build up an uneven textured paint surface.
Two or three close variants of a blue/mauve are mixed with a palette knife using Permanent Mauve, Winsor Red and Titanium White. A little Cadmium Yellow Light is added to reduce the chroma of the mauve to make it less purple and more grey. The relative amounts of each paint are varied slightly in each mix to give the variations.
A grey scale is used to pitch the darkest sky values at their correct value. These darker sky values are firstly brushed in at the top, freely interweaving the colour variants we have mixed in order to make this area more interesting and tactile. Minimal blending is used – Just enough to join the strokes together and remove any distracting hard edges. An obvious pattern of diagonal movement across the sky is formed with directional strokes in order to create a dynamic mood.
When doing this, be careful not to cover up all of the drawing of the tree forms. Carefully paint around enough of them to leave as much visual information as required to join the dots” and put it all back in again later.
In the lower blue/mauve sky areas, lighter tints are introduced as the sky is generally always lighter towards the horizon.
The lightest, brightest part of the painting, being the lower sky against the horizon, is put in next with very high value mixes. These are made by adding tiny amounts of Cadmium Yellow Light and Winsor Red to much larger amounts of Titanium White. Think in terms of a pinhead of colour to a tablespoon of white. If the colour is not strong enough, add another pinhead quantity. Keep going until you have the really bright cream mix you want.
In order to keep the sky creation clean and controlled, paint in the light areas thickly but stay well away from the blue masses already placed. The two must not meet at all. We don’t want the blue mauves mixing into the bright creams and muddying them.
To help with this process you can do as I did when painting this demonstration and use two palette knives and two brushes, one set each for the opposing colour families. Everything, including the mixes on the board, are totally segregated so there is no cross contamination.
STEP FIVE
Now carefully mix a neutral grey by taking some of the sky colour and adding Cadmium Yellow Light to it until there is no discernible colour. Then add Titanium White to that until the mix is almost as light as the lightest creamy sky areas.
This neutral mix will form a buffer between the blues and creams already put on the canvas. Use it to fill in the gaps between the two areas and minimally blend into each.
That completes the sky.
STEP SIX
All the edges that touch the sky are put in now while the sky is still wet.
The tree trunks and branches are painted in with small flat and round brushes and a rigger for the finest lines. The fine masses of twigs at the end of the branches are carefully added with a small bristle fan brush that creates multiple parallel marks with a single stroke. Twisting this brush during placement of the stroke can help taper the spacing of the marks.
At some time around Step 6 during the painting of this demonstration, an insect landed on the wet sky. This is nothing unusual. When painting outdoors, it happens all the time. The usual remedy is to carefully lift it out of the paint with a palette knife. On this occasion, I liked where it landed compositionally and it looks just like a distant bird of the type I would expect to see at this location – so I left it there! It is now a part of the painting.
To create the dark brown of the silhouetted branches etc., Winsor Red and Permanent Mauve were mixed to create a dark purple. Adding more red and a little Cadmium Yellow Light shifts the mix towards brown. A touch of white lightens it and this lighter dark is used for the smaller linear elements reaching into the sky.
Adding some more yellow and blue to these dark mixes creates a good shadow base for the foliage and that is put down along near the horizon where the background bush will be.
Neutral greens and warmer yellow greens are then mixed with Permanent Mauve and Cadmium Yellow Light. Adding a little Winsor Red reduces the chroma of the mixed green and makes it a more natural dull green grey. Adding more yellow creates a brighter warmer sunlit green.
These are painted wet-in-wet on the previously laid shadow darks to create the soft foliage edges that meet the sky and the beginnings of the rounded bush forms, following the underpainting’s pattern of light and shade.
Now we have the sky, silhouettes and horizon contour edges all done This is a major “rest stop” and the painting can be left to dry now without the wet-in-wet process being effected. Alternatively, we can just keep going and move on to Step 7 right away.
STEP SEVEN
The foreground is put in quite loosely with flat bristle brushes and lots of medium to completely cover up the underpainting and mould all forms with soft fuzzy shadow and midtone values. There is no attempt at leaving brush texture here. This is a base to paint thickly over and if it is too thick we won’t be able to paint cleanly on top of it while it is wet.
Leaving it thin and rich with the Painting Medium provides a solid layer of paint that will get tacky quickly so we can paint on it but it will still be workable if necessary.
STEP EIGHT
Now all the high value elements that are receiving direct sunlight are brushed in over the previous stage. Green mixes with lots of red and yellow in them to keep them warm are used.
For the broader masses, the paint is applied thickly and dragged off the brush by the existing paint layers more so than painted on directly. This enables a hit and miss coverage that leaves natural looking random gaps so that the lower shade values show through.
This brush technique needs to be executed carefully ith the brush laid almost flat against the painting surface, making minimal contact.
For the thinner elements and highlights, thicker paint is laid on by dabbing and/or twisting the tip of smaller brushes so as to work the paint on to the surface.
FINAL STEP
To bring the painting to completion, all the little interesting bits and high chroma highlights are added with small flat and round brushes plus a rigger and a small fan.
The red flowers tints are various mixes of Winsor Red and Cadmium Yellow Light with Titanium White put on with very thick dabs of paint from the tip of a small round brush. The stems are placed with the flat edge of a palette knife. Using the knife like a stamp enables fine vibrant lines to be placed directly onto wet paint, a task which can be very difficult using a brush. This is a very useful technique that may need some practice first before attempting on a painting if you haven’t done it before.
The fan brush is used to create some textured “busy” areas of tangled twigs and leaves. A few extra sticks can be placed across the foliage and into the sky with the edge of the knife and some dark brown mix.
At this stage the painting could look like a group of unrelated objects sitting beside each other across the painting rather than a unified whole. To bring it all together so that everything seems related to everything else and a sense of harmony is achieved, we need to add a common element.
This is done with greys. Mix two mid value greys, one warm tending towards red yellow, and one cool tending towards blue green. They should be close in colour and almost colour neutral but still easily discernible from each other. Now sprinkle little dabs of those two greys around all over the foliage areas, popping them into little gaps and over similar value greens. Use them to cover up untidy bits. Don’t overdo it and don’t put them in the deep darks areas or over highlights. Stick to mid value areas.
Using these greys will tie everything together and subdue any tendency for the painting to start appearing too “chocolate box” pretty.
Before finishing, the foreground earth details need to be put in. Mix tints of mauve/brown by adding some white and yellow to purple. These are for the shadows and are brushed in directly. For the sunlit areas of ground, mix tints of orange and paint those on directly too. Add a touch of purple to reduce the strength of the oranges and more white and yellow for the strongest highlights. Take care to mould the ground shadows to the left of the highlighted mounds so as to achieve a sense of light coming in strongly from the right.
Finally, the rock is painted in directly over a dark brown base using slightly lighter tints of the ground shadow mauves and that completes the painting.
