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Thursday, September 7, 2017

Doing What I Do - Landscape Painting

Haven't Done This In A While

17 years ago, I started out painting landscapes.

Since then, I've painted lots of other things,
like flowers!
I've gone crazy painting flowers.
I've painted old trucks and tractors.
I've painted baseballs, basketball, footballs, soccer balls
I've worked on figure painting
I've painted still lifts
I've painted indoors and out.
I've painted realistically and abstractly.

but I often come back to my starting point.
Painting Landscapes.


I started out with a 16" x 20" canvas I toned using burnt Sienna and some white and a little ultramarine blue in spots.  
I used a mixture of burnt umber and ultramarine blue
to sketch in the darkest parts of my painting.  
It gives me a place to start and helps keep me on track.
It also reminds me where the darkest parts of the painting will be.


I added sky starting with a mix of Ultramarine blue, dioxazine purple and turquoise deep with some titanium white.
You can see it starts darker at the top and gets lighter as it comes to the horizon line.
That creates depth.
I also took some of the same color as the sky for the water.

Started adding clouds here.

 Working on the clouds getting them more 3D looking.


I'm adding in most distant trees and varying layers of rocks.


I'm working from a photo my son James took in Utah.
So I have my iPad on a stand and this is how I work.


I've added some pine trees and I'm working on a lot of tree trunks that might be dead or might become pine trees.
  

I'm working on the trees and rocks here.
There are always a minimum of three values on the rocks and then sometimes you pull in a few other colors to bring them to life.
 Starting to add more water in deeper tones to add depth later.
I've also refined the rocks.
Notice how the ones in the foreground are warmer and brighter than the ones further back. 
 That also aids in the depth of the painting.


Starting to get movement in the water.


I'm really trying to get the water churning.  
There's lots of shades of white with touches of green, turquoise, and yellow added for more depth.

Here's a closeup of rocks on the left of the painting.

Here's a closeup of the rocks and water on the right side.


I made this short video near the end of the painting as I was adding more debris to the background and bringing out more trunks of the trees.

This was a really fun painting to do
and I hope you enjoyed the process photos.

Here it is.
Done and done,
and signed.

16" x 20" acrylic on stretched canvas - unframed

$200



Thanks for stopping by today and 
I hope you enjoyed seeing this process.

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2 comments:

  1. I did enjoy watching you add those touches that added so much light. Great post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Julie. It's amazing how a few strokes completes a painting.

    ReplyDelete

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About Me

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Ghent, Kentucky, United States
I'm a nature artist and I love to paint old barns, rivers and lakes, trees and fence rows and flowers. I work almost daily. You can purchase paintings by contacting me at slgraves6@gmail.com and there is also a tab across the top of my blog for available paintings and one for small paintings with buy now buttons. You can also purchase through my Etsy shop using the name of Fine Nature Art. . Thank you so much for stopping by.