21 May 2018 After the success with mountains a couple of days before (Susten Pass)…
Last Days Of Summer
Another quite traditional looking painting today. I was watching a YouTube video this morning where Gordon MacKenzie was showing how to paint trees and foliage using torn up sponges. I felt inspired to give it a go myself. I didn’t have the any of the cellulose sponges that Gordon recommended; instead I tore up an old bathroom sponge and used that. The sponge was used for the leaves on the tree and the foliage along the horizon. The main trunk of the tree was wiped out using kitchen roll.
This painting is the first that I’ve done on the more expensive cotton paper. It does feel a little bit more expensive, although I wouldn’t like to say whether I’d have noticed if I’d not already known. The paper is also “extra white” which should make my paintings more dazzling with my extensively use of transparent colours. I think this is already the case on this one.
I only used four colours today. Prussian blue and Indian yellow were my blue and yellow. Rose dore and burnt sienna served as my reds in the sky and in the tree/foreground respectively. Any grey in the sky was made from rose dore and Prussian blue. Rose dore is really starting to show its worth and will definitely replace light red in my palette when its well runs dry. Even then, I’ll still have light red in a tube for the odd guest appearance.
I think this came out reasonably well overall and I’m putting it up for sale. The tree is pretty good, although I think it would have benefited from more gaps in the foliage allowing the sky to shine through. I like the sky too, with the Indian yellow on extra white paper giving some shine, especially over on the left where there’s something shining through the clouds. The foreground has come out OK. I can see the benefits of using three transparent colours: if one or two of them had been opaque, it would have all turned to mud. And the salt crystals that I sprinkled on have grown into something interesting too. All in all a decent job.
This looks absolutely cracking in a frame and was the second one to be sold to my former boss in Sussex.
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