SIAS Newsletter November 2018

And here’s another one.  This is called SIAS Newsletter November 2018 after the email that included the stock photo this was based on.  It’s getting too difficult to come up with names.

Colours today were cobalt blue (the coldest looking blue on my palette), Prussian Blue (for the greens), Payne’s grey, burnt umber, raw sienna, light red, a dash of quinacridone magenta in the sky and titanium white (which, in a break from my normal habits, I allowed to wet into wet with other colours).  I used a bit of granulation fluid, for the first time, in the hill in the foreground.  The birds were added afterwards, in pen, after everything had been put away: I thought the painting needed an extra bit of interest, however tiny.

Overall I think this is OK and worth framing.  The sky is generally good.  The light red, which was added to trees and foreground only to make the colours more interesting, worked out well.  And the scraped out foliage in the foreground came out really well, looking as if one side of each scraped line is in shadow.  I think the granulation fluid may be responsible for that effect.

Bad points are the bottom right bit of sky (a bit monochrome) and the green trees which have an artificial looking minty colour about them.  Maybe I needen’t have bothered with any green in there.  I’m making the error of sticking too closely to the original photo.  I’m also probably being a bit too heavy with the background paints.  They could do with a lighter touch.  With the background that heavy, I had to be really heavy with the foreground, especially with that row of trees.  Oh well, live and learn.  This one has been cut up to be used as collage material.