Looking South, oil, 10x10
In response to several requests, I wanted to share an example of my process for a painting. I admit right away that photographing my work is one of my biggest challenges and so I apologize for the quality of these pictures but I thought they are better than nothing. While I approach every painting in a unique way, I will try to describe my usual practices for painting and this painting in particular.
I paint using a couple of different techniques, using a brush or using a knife. In the past year I have been painting with the knife much more. I like that a knife keeps me from getting too caught up in detail, I can't control it nearly as much as a brush. That could be due to my lack of experience with the knife (or a brush), maybe others feel the same way? One benefit of the knife for me has been laying down color. With a brush, the colors often get muted by the paint underneath that stroke but a knife lays in on thick and clean. I feel it gives a much more impressionist feel to the piece and I am enjoying the challenge.
I start with a toned canvas. In this case, canvas mounted on to a cradled panel. I found that using a knife on a stretched canvas doesn't work very well, too much give in the surface and I like to get a little rough. I very often use Transparent Red Oxide as my toner. It gives a nice warmth as a base.
This painting was done using a palette knife although I usually block in all my paintings with a larger brush, very often a #12 flat. Initially, I try to get the whole surface covered. The first layer can be a little darker than the colors that will be used in the painting so the darker colors can pop through and give some depth to the shapes.
Very often parts of the lay in get covered over and will need to get more defined at a later stage. I generally like to work back to front with the knife but I always seem to have to go over parts before I am done.
One thing I loved about this scene, and many mountain scenes, is the warmth of the trees against the cool blues of the mountains. I wanted to keep the lower trees dark but I added some warm darks to help that contrast.
I tried to vary the spacing of the trees to show depth and avoid creating things in a line. I did scrape the snow covered trees on the right, I just didn't like them and came back later to finish them off as you will see in the final piece. Due to so much texture on a palette knife painting, I find that once I start applying heavy paint with a knife it needs to be done alla prima or wet on wet. If I don't finish the piece in one day, I must finish it the next day while the paint is still wet.
This was the final outcome. It's always a bit of give and take. I went back into the sky to make it a little cooler and to define the cottonwoods a bit more. I also added a punch of a brighter blue mixture to the mountains for more of that contrast.
I hope this progression has helped some in spite of the poor photos. Would love to hear any questions or comments so please feel free to email me.
Thanks for listening to me (I could talk painting all day, every day) and happy painting.
Denise
