I had my art class last night. This week we did landscapes. If you’ve checked out my work that I have posted on this blog previously, then you should gather that I love painting landscapes.
This week I learned a new technique to create landscape pieces. We were instructed to use a tonal under painting or grisaille effect to build layers and create a richer looking painting.
First, we chose photos that we wanted to recreate. I borrowed mine from the internet:
Photo by Herbert Johan
We then sketched out the basic shapes onto our canvas. After sketching, I took black paint and mixed it with matte medium (one of my new favorite paint additives) to create a greyish watered down black to begin shading in the darker areas for the first layer.
Here is my underpainting!
My shapes are a bit off as far as the landscape, deal with it.
After that was dry, I put another thin layer of matte medium on top and then used a hair dryer to quickly dry the paint.
The next step was to determine what my basic color blocks should be and apply those colors transparently so the gray underpainting shows through a bit and not to focus on the details of the painting.
I used a very light blueish purple for the sky and brought it down into the farther hills. I then took a darker blueish tealish green and formed the farther hills and brought it down into the closer hills. Finally I used a more natural bright green/yellow to build the foreground and pulled it into the closer hills to blend with the darker green/blue. In words, this makes very little sense. So here:
Finally, you are to go in and start adding the details to the painting and other layers of paint to create the scene keeping in mind the light source in the painting and the mood. My picture felt serene and calm to me, so I wanted to focus on creating that feeling for the audience.
We ran out of time for me to get very far into this final process. Last night, I managed to complete the sky/clouds and part of the tree.
I took some color liberty with the sky to give it a sunset affect and as if the sun was striking the clouds.
Here you go:
More updates to come as I finish the rest of the painting. The last photo looks darker than it actually is. My phone camera isn’t the best.
