Painting in progress

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johnsu

@hotkey.net.au

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This is not really the start it is about 3 sittings in. Firstly I start with the sky (I mostly paint from the top down or from the distance to close up) A lot of my sky’s are painted in acrylic so they dry quick and I can paint over them.

This painting however was painted all in oil. I added “Liquin”

To the paint, this is a drying and liquefying agent which made the paint easy to blend to the shades of blue . It dries enough in a day to allow me to paint and blend the clouds. In the same sitting I painted the base hill color.

Next the background trees and center bushes came to life closely followed by the water, not a lot of detail yet I need this to dry.

After a day or so it is dry enough to put some detail to the tree trunks on the center hills and closer bushes. Adding some lighter color over the dark in the tree leaves and darker color to the grass over the lighter ground. Most of the detail for each area is painted as I go allowing me to paint over it in future sessions. This way I don't have to try to fill in small bits of canvas later I just paint over them.

Getting the water right took a while and I found I had to keep adding to it as I put the detailed objects around the edge, thus creating reflections that truly represented the color of the surrounding bank and plants.

Another problem was to make the water have the look of movement, and the best way I found to do this was to add darker shades of blue and a rippled look. (sorry the colors are not real good but you get the idea)

As I do the foreground I keep slipping back to the center bank and in doing so I give the paint time to dry in both areas. The rocks along the bank are given detail at the same time as I do the dark shape of the tree stump in the foreground. I lay down the base color of the foreground grass then go back and add detail to the far bank edge.

Finally it is just a matter of adding detail to the tree and close grass then let it dry.

All up this painting took about 3 weeks to finish but only about 20 hours in actual painting time.

I was quite pleased with the finished result.

This series of photos shows the progress of one of my paintings Point Hut.

Sorry about the quality of the photos but they were taken with a web cam before I purchased the good digital camera.