Wednesday 31 January 2018

#292 'Winter, Winkworth Arboretum ' 8x10"


I completed this oil sketch in one hour this afternoon. 
The sun was out for about 20 minutes when I started which was a bonus as it looked so much better with the light on the trees. Squinting my eyes I could see quite a difference with the lower foliage being in shadow. 
First stages...
One of my new things I'm working on is not copying exactly what I see in the subject colour wise, so the dark area I exaggerated the red-violets more. Taking what I see as a starting point but then using complementaries together and lifting certain colours more. Which will hopefully be a more pleasing result. When I first started plein air I thought you were supposed to mix the exact colour for everything you see but you don't have too which is quite liberating!

I was watching You Tube again last night prepping for todays painting and I saw Roos Schuring painting and an interview after, she is a well known Dutch painter. 
She has wonderful brush strokes and thick paint in her work. Something I picked up was she said don't use too soft a brush as the brush marks wont show so well, use old bristly stiff brushes. So I dug out my very old rejected brushes (Escoda Filbert no.16) and had a go today. They worked really well for the winter foliage. Here is the link to Roos painting if your interested......

1 comment:

  1. You won’t be throwing out any old brushes then..... love how you have made the trees so much more interesting with your colour choices. The reflections and water colours are well observed.

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