May

9

October Skies Part 5

Filed Under Carrie Lewis 

May 8, 2008.

Here is an update on this painting. I have been working on it in small chunks of time and have managed to get some time into it almost every day since Monday.

But if you compare this image with the image in the post for Part 4, you probably won’t see a lot of difference.

The reason is that I’ve been doing a lot of the detail work that needs to be done in the background, before I can paint the foreground over it.

Yes, I did say paint ‘over it’.

Because trees particularly and all elements in general should give the illusion of appearing in front or behind other elements in the painting, some of them will need to be partially hidden. Some artists can plan out the visible parts and paint just those areas. I’ve tried that and, believe it or not, it’s a lot easier and a lot less time consuming for me to paint every layer of distance as though it were going to be 100% visible, then cover up part of it with the next layer forward.

Parts of the background cover up parts of the sky.

Parts of the middle ground cover up parts of the background and sky.

Parts of the foreground cover up parts of the middle ground, background and sky.

So with a painting like this one, I invariably end up painting a lot of areas that won’t be visible in the finished painting.

This detail of the painting illustrates my point. The bright green trees are in the middle ground. The dark green on the right is in the extreme foreground.

In order to create the look of trees overlapping trees and the completely random openings between leaves and leaf masses, I almost have to paint every leaf and leap mass.

Take a look at the bright green shapes against the sky. Can you imagine painting each of those sky holes individually? It’s much easier to paint the sky in one, unbroken layer, then add the tree shapes over it.

The same applies to the darker tree in the foreground relative to the brighter trees in the background and even the grass on the ground.

It does sometimes seem to take a long time to paint every layer completely, then come along later and cover up part of it.

But when trees turn out like these are, the time and effort are definitely worth it!

So each day I work, I add a little bit more mass and form to the trees, building them up slowly by tapping and dabbing paint onto a large canvas with a little, slightly misshapen sable brush.

I have to make a confession, though. The most difficult part of this part of the painting process is to touch the brush to the canvas once and then leave that brush stroke alone! There definitely times when one is better than two!

The colors being used are Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red and Cerulean Blue in the background or French Ultramarine Blue in the foreground.

Larger sable rounds and an occasional bristle flat brush have been used on the foreground trees; smaller sable rounds are being used on the background trees where leaf masses should look smaller.

A small sable round that is great for random detail but not much else is being used to paint the grass where shadows and highlights meet.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.

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