this time i finished the virtual paintout before it ended! and it really was a challenge! except for the sailboat painting, i've never done ocean, & few landscapes . . . plus i decided it was time to loosen up!
first, this is the view on prince edward island that i chose:
i liked the simplicity, the opportunity for abstraction, and the play of rosy pinks against purpley blues. here things are, ready to go:
i used a 5x7 canvas board (untoned), put the photo up on the frame, and laid out my palette, using ultramarine, cerulean, sap green, trans yellow oxide, cad yellow light, cad red light, & alizarin:
i tried a new way to organize the paints - i put the white in the upper left corner as usual, but i put the reds & yellows going off to the right on the top & the blues & greens going down the left. i really liked it - seemed a natural way to arrange them for me, & it kept the colors well separated, too! i'll keep trying it this way for a while.i started to mix the sky color first, using cerulean & white, with a tidbit of alizarin. but before i got the colors really mixed, i thought about using painting knives instead of brushes. i've done only one painting before this with knives only, & loved it! so, just to make this even more of a challenge (mere hours before it was due!) - i decided to do it! here's the sky mix (which i kept marbled instead of mixing it to a consistent color - same with the water mix later on) & the knife (brown handle) i used to put it on:
then i mixed the water color (ultramarine & white) & put that in with the same knife. here is the initial block-in - i've left the canvas blank where the dune was going:
then i mixed up the sand bar color, using alizarin, white, & a smidge of trans yellow. i used this little guy to lay it in - this knife felt like a filbert to me & i thought the shape would work well for putting in that long strip of color - & it did!
then i mixed the dunes mix, using some of the sand bar mix with more white & a touch of cad red light to brighten & warm it up. i used this little triangular knife to lay in all the rest of the painting, including all the details of plants & shadowing, etc that came later:
here're all the blues & pinks in. i didn't put any paint where i was going to put in the largest mass of green for the dune plants:
i hadn't done any measurements, & at this point i realized the sand bar was way too wide. so i just used the knife to lift it off & lay in more ocean. then i mixed up four different greens (using my lightest pink for the base of the light greens), some lighter or darker, some purer or greyer. & i realized the sap green wasn't going to cut it for the darkest greens. ooops! got out the olive green & that worked! i also decided the sand colors needed a hint more depth, & added hints of burnt sienna to the bar & the darker dunes. the water behind the sand bar i darkened using anthraquinone blue (if it's ok with you, i may just start calling this 'ant blue' - i'm lazy, & it's fast becoming my favorite blue!)
i then had to put in the clouds. i realized that the horizontal clouds of the photo just wouldn't work - too many horizontals (that sand bar's a whopper, even though it looks better in person than in the photos!). so i decided to go for a fluffy cloud approach. first i mixed up a black to get in the darks. i used the ant blue with alizarin, & a teeny hint of trans yellow oxide - very nice, deeply purple black, just right for the clouds! (this is an awful photo, but it gives you an idea, i hope!). i mixed a small amount of it with white, & worked it in where i wanted clouds.
then i dipped the knife into pure white, strolled it very lightly through the ant blue (leaving a trail behind it!)
and worked in the lighter parts of the clouds. by the way, you can see in the above photo the trail left in the olive green when i slid the knife lightly through it to get just a thin line of paint to make some dark highlights. i love how versatile the knives are, going from smearing on huge masses to fine detail (well, it'd've been finer if my hands didn't shake!).here's what my palette looked like when i was done. i didn't end up using the cad yellow light at all. i really am finding that the more i paint, the more i experiment with my colors & find out which ones work better for me.
and here it is all finished! (it's hard to get a good photo on this one, since the masses of paint keep picking up &/or shadowing the light!)
i had a lot of fun with this one! it's got that looser, more abstract, interpreted style i feel i want to express in my work, & the painting knives made it easier & even more fun! i really like the clouds - they have volume but are also fluffy - they float as they should! (i have been terrified of trying clouds in the past!) the dunes worked well, along with the plants. the water i'm so-so on - and the sand bar . . . well, i knew it would be hard to get that strong horizontal to work. i think it needed some more variation in color to really pull it off - and a steadier hand to get in the light & dark tones right in the front of it (i tried, but it was too shaky to look very good so i modified it a bit). all in all tho - i like it!thanks for stopping by - take care till next time!
dusty!
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