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Study for Oil Painting - and challenge
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Message
Posted
How are you doing now, Denise? No pressure, because I haven't even started my oil version yet!
I think the thing will be to concentrate on those bare bones you mention, without being led up the cliff path by excessive detail: which I confess I always find a challenge. Mine will be a small painting, 8" by 8" - you're under no obligation at all to do it my way, but I think an interesting feature will be just what to put underneath, as it were - i.e. what background; how to add the white flowers and others to the foreground: do I lay down a base colour of green and paint them over that? Do I lay in the shadows, perhaps in another colour entirely? There are so many options - and probably a rather bigger board than mine might be a good idea, to avoid crowding it. I've chosen this size for my own personal challenge, but I know I'd find a bigger one a touch easier.
The thing for me will be to capture the utter silence of the area - the soft air, the smell of the garlic (well: I don't do smell-o-vision, but will do my poor best) the sense of deeper depths on the way to the cliff face beyond: I wish I could convey the disappointment I felt that I can no longer climb it; the legs just wouldn't allow me the stability needed to avoid coming down again a lot faster than I went up.
Anyway: it'll be fun, I tell myself!
Posted
Well Robert, I didn't work on it today as I was saying farewell to my relative flying back to Sweden. I find foliage difficult and It dawned on me yesterday that I had started the whole thing wrong. I didn't want to paint over the tree structures because I was happy with their placement. I was thinking about all the mistakes and my errors yesterday evening. I've been looking at it today and I've figured out my big major errors and I'm determined, I can now turn my disaster around, when I start back on it tomorrow. I'll show you the mess I've made so far, but I think I can now say, I have got some bare bones of it. I am enjoying doing it because it is challenging and I'm leaning through the mistakes I'm making. The first picture I was trying to get the shapes in and figure out how the light is playing through the trees and the light hit's the trees from different sources. I started putting a bit of foliage in to start blocking the light, then thought, no, this is all wrong, I need to block areas with heavier coverage. That you can see in the second picture, so I need to paint all the branches in, that I've painted over. So I definitely think, I've got bare bones now, to work with.
Posted
I think your thought-out second approach is just the right way to go with this. I've just this second finished - I think - my version: can't get a good photo of it at this time of night, and as it's oil it may be a bit difficult to get a good one tomorrow, too. We'll see. I can tell you though that I found it a challenge too - I had just the same troubles that you had, through not painting foliage for quite a while (amazing how soon one can lose the knack) - I should have blocked it in at the outset, but - went for the trees first: that worked in acrylic, but oil isn't acrylic so I had to go back on myself.
It was fun, though! The painting is on the dark side, but then, so was the area depicted, what with the tree cover and the cliff behind. I used White (Cremnitz, and Titanium), Yellow Ochre; Lemon Yellow; Cadmium Yellow Light; Burnt Sienna; Cadmium Red Light; Pthalo Green; and Ultramarine Blue. I hardly ever use Pthalo Green - couldn't find my Viridian.
I may well have another go from one of my other photos of the same place, different angle - and think I'll go a bit bigger than 8" by 8" next time. I thought people who tried this one would learn from doing it, and you say you have, so have I, so mission accomplished.
