Our family just love Iceland. It is a place of unspoiled beauty with scenes that leaves you breathless. Anneli, my eldest daughter, and myself decided to take on one of the scenes from Iceland and complete a joint painting. The result was quite satisfying and is presented below.
This is a follow-up post on my study in clouds. I really like this outcome. I considered this painting and the previous one as my best to date (at around August 2015) and consequently had them framed. The outcome was remarkable. I still get a deep sense of satisfaction looking at these paintings.
I have an obsession with clouds. Living in South Africa kind of forces you to take note of the beautiful sunrises, sunsets and thunderstorm clouds if you live in the interior of the country. During my last holiday in De Rust in the Klein (Little) Karoo I spend a lot of time working on clouds. The following post and the one to follow is the result of my study in clouds. I am really satisfied with the result.
The work was completed in Winsor and Newton Galleria acrylic on canvas sheet. I only used titanium white, ultramarine and burnt sienna.
For the last couple of weeks I have been busy with a commissioned work based on the Red Hills (refer to my previous post listed here) near De Rust in the Western Cape. My plan was to do the same painting with better sky and clouds and a better composition of the mountains. I am busy working through a course of Johannes Vloothuis entitled The Essentials of Painting Mountains and I incorporated what I learned form this course into the painting. But, as I was busy with the landscape I suddenly realized that the hills are quite dark and when I added colour to the hills, that it looks like sunshine hitting it straight on. So the painting turned out as shown below. Rather unexpected, but quite nice. When looking at the painting I get the feeling of being in the Little Karoo early in the morning. I can hear the farm and the sounds through the early morning air. The air is quite chilly and just at that moment the sun breaks the horizon and hits the top of the hills. I feel like I can walk around in this painting and really be there.
The things that works in this painting are the sky, the clouds (to some degree) and the composition of the hill within the photo. I also managed in incorporate some interesting features into the field at the bottom center of the painting. As I look at the painting and sit back to savor my coffee, it tastes really good. The outcome was different to what I expected, but quite satisfying.
I encourage you to click on the image to see a larger version of the painting. The colour is better in the bigger image.
Early morning on the red hills
I have lagged somewhat with the blog posts in the last while, but I want to introduce 2 grey-scale studies in this post. My objective was to work with a heavier paint basis, play with a new range of brushes and in particular play with the scheme of light and dark.
The first painting (presented below) was done with strong application of the palette knife. I don’t feel I quite accomplished the my objective, but the result was acceptable.
Black and white woods
The second study was on a coastal line. I focused more on using a brush than a palette knife in the painting and accomplished what I intended to. I felt that I also succeeded in the proper application of my new brush set in this painting. The yellowish colour in the photo of the painting is due to an effect of the camera.
Coastline
It has taken me a full month to complete my latest painting. It is presented below. I call it “Contrasts” since the whole painting is about contrasts. There is the obvious strong contrast of the tree against the clouds, the streetlights against the clouds and the building across the river against the sunset. But there is also the contrast of the vegetation against the hard lines of the building and then there is the contrast of the old man against the deck. It seems like the chairs on the deck resembles a place of leisure, while the old man is struggling forth to go home. The whole painting therefore speaks to me of contrast.
I learnt an enormous amount about detail and the value of getting stuck in particular area of a painting to work it through. I spend much time layering the various parts of the painting and realized the value of creating texture with the paint since it results in a a more professional feel to the painting.
The painting was completed in Winsor & Newton Galleria acrylics on 61cm x 76 cm canvas.
Contrast
I spent the last week working on the final version of Lise’s portrait. I did 2 studies of Lise on watercolour paper and finally decided to put it on canvas as a sepia painting. Well, the final version took me more than a week to complete and I realized why portrait painting is so difficult. There is a very fine line between light and dark and it is quite difficult to decide just when to stop working the painting and when the rounding and shading is good enough. For a landscape painting I can exercise my artistic freedom, but for a portrait the painting must look exactly like the person. The painter therefore has limited freedom of expression. Colour may change, but contour, shape and shading must all stay realistic and true to your model.
Anyway, the final version is presented below. I think I managed OK for my first portrait. It feels a little too “white”, but the real painting has character and is a good representation of Lise. I will probably do portraits again, but will move on to something else for now. Portraits are a lot of work.
Final portrait of Lise (acrylic on canvas)
Something bothered me about the Red Hill painting that I did over the weekend. I subsequently took the photo of the painting and worked it in my favorite iPad app ProCreate (something like Photoshop for the iPad) to see what the impact would be of some changes. I wanted to change the clouds since they looked like grade 1 crayon clouds. I also wanted to put a little focus on the middle head and was contemplating the removal of the little workers’ house to the left in the picture. From ProCreate I saw that the change in the sky and the focus on the middle head will work, but my artistic adviser (my wife) wanted me to leave the little house in, so I followed her advise, especially since the painting will be hanging in our house.
And so I worked the sky until it worked and felt like the sky in the Little Karoo – fresh and bright blue in a way that you can only find in the Karoo. I worked the middle head and put the focus on it in a satisfactory way until I knew that I had to stop and this is the result. I tried to do something of a spotlights effect on the middle head, but I am not sure it worked. I am still struggling with photographing my paintings, so the colour looks different from the previous painting.
Something in this painting just works for me. My favorite online art teacher (Richard Robinson) recently made the following statement in reaction to the question of “Why do we paint?”. He said a lot of things, but then concluded with the comment: “One of my favorite moments is sitting back with a coffee and absorbing a freshly finished painting – seeing how my passion translated itself into paint. If the translation is garbled their is inevitably disappointment, but if the translation is true the coffee seems to taste extra good.” This is where I am now. It is 23:19 at night and I decided to stop painting. I can still do a lot of things and say a lot of things about the painting. The balance is probably not right and there is a discrepancy in the details in the left and middle head, but I decided that I am finished and that the painting says what I wanted it to say. And now I can savor the coffee. I sit in front of the painting and start up the left head to go and inspect the caves at the top and have an awesome view over the Little Karoo from the top of that big red head. Then I venture down to inspect that lonely house and try to determine its story before I start up the rocky middle hill. This one is mysterious with all the rocks, crevices and deep shadows. I can see myself climbing between these while staring at the painting and climbing into it. I finally walk over to the right hand head from where I look down on the farmyard and from where I can here the morning farm noises. I see the trees and the dark shadows between the the trees. The shadows and the house between the shadows look so real. They look like they really look. I sit and I look and and walk around some more on the farm and then I know that I feel satisfied and that the coffee is really tasting very good.
This was my first real landscape and my first panoramic. I put a lot of effort into this painting and I was very technical in my approach to it. I will probably paint it again and then I will change some things, for for now I feel really satisfied with the outcome and with those trees, oh those trees…
For my latest painting I took on a topic which I knew was difficult: I tried to do a proper landscape painting of a panoramic photo on a wide canvas. I was quite excited since I recently bought new paint. On the suggestion of a professional artist, I bought Winson and Newton’s Galleria series of artist quality acrylic paints. The artist (Diane McLean from De Rust) suggested that the better quality paints should give my painting the better colour quality that I am looking for. So, I was looking forward to using my new paints on this very ambitious project.
While on holiday in the Little Karoo in the town of De Rust (near Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape), I took a series of panoramic photos of the well-known red hills in the area. My plan was to a create some panoramic paintings from these photos. The photo that I used for my painting is presented here.
Red Hills reference photo
The big challenge was to get the balance right between light and dark and details versus vagueness. Since I was working with new paints, I followed the advise of my online art teacher Richard Robinson by using a limited palette and first creating a colour chart. I used Raw Sienna and Ultramarine as the primary colours and used white (both Titanium white and mixing white) and light yellow to reduce the darkness in the colour. Off course, the yellow also brings green into the picture and this green is a better green than my tubegreen (Phthalo green). The colour charts are presented below.
Raw sienna – ultramarine – white colour chart
Raw sienna – ultramarine -yellow colour chart
The colour charts turned out to be crucial for this project since I could simply refer to the chart to determine what colour I needed to mix and how I needed to mix it. I spent 16 hours finishing this painting and result is presented below. I am satisfied with the painting. The clouds could get some more attention and I would like to do something with the field in the foreground, but I decided to leave it as is. To me it was a real accomplishment to be able to express the level of realism that I have managed to do.
The Red Hills
One of the aspects highlighted in the Colour Course by Richard Robinson is the proper use of colour and the utilization of a limited palette consisting of complementary colours. I decided to do a study in a limited palette and the result was one of my most satisfactory paintings to date. It was done on a small 8″ x 11″ hardboard and I will definitely consider putting this on a proper canvas.
I made use of yellow ocre and ultramarine as the base colours with a little titanium white being used in places. The aim of the study was to see that, if two complementary colours (the yellow ocre and the ultramarine) are added, a greyish colour is obtained. Adding more of the dark colour will push this grey towards the lower (darker) values and adding more of the lighter colour (the ocre) will push it towards the higher (lighter) values. It was difficult sticking to the strict value scales while experimenting with the limited palette, but I did explicitly plan towards specific values as spread through the painting.
This was the first painting that I did that I felt was really lifelike, even if being done with a limited palette. The values feel strong (as supported by the grey-scale version of the photo) and the lights feel really life-like. The photo does not tell the true story since the colour is washed out in the photo, but something in this story “just works”. I think it is the movement in the water and the light on the rope that is making the painting believable.
I start to get the impression that I am better at painting “dead things” than “living things”.
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