Dinner with Friends
30″ x 24″
Oil on Masonite

Colors Used: Titanium White and Raw Umber

This painting is going through a phase in which I am grateful for the under painting technique I use. One step forward and two steps backward, to be sure!

In the last post on this painting, I was working on the two horses at the right side of the painting. A lot of time had been put into the dark colored horse and, after taking a backward step on it, I thought I had it figured out.

But when I looked at it the next time, I found some major flaws in the dark horse and didn’t much care for the light horse, either.

I hadn’t worked on the painting for a week. That meant it was nice and dry, so when I went back to work, I didn’t pick up a paint brush. I picked up a piece of sand paper. I didn’t put paint on the canvas; I took it off

Sanding focused on the two horses and when the paint had been sufficiently removed and the surface was nice and smooth, I wiped the dust off with a rag. Only then, did I begin painting again.

But instead of working on the horses, I decided to paint all of the meadow. Lots and lots of tall grass. I did that for a couple of reasons.

The first one was to further cover up the horses. Concealing mistakes is often the best way to fix them and I thought I would do some more drawing on paper to figure out the problems, then repaint the horses.

Since it was the last day to work on this painting before the weekend, painting in the grass would allow for the prompt completion of a large portion of the painting and would provide sufficient time for it to dry while I figured out the horses.

Raw Umber and Titanium White were applied in horizontal bands across large sections of the grassy area. Sometimes they were blended lightly at that stage, sometimes they were not blended at all. In a couple of areas, I used the tube of paint itself to apply the paint.

Using a #20 white bristle brush (shown here), I pulled the colors into and over one another to simulate grass. In some areas, the paint was dragged with short brush strokes. In some areas, I simply pressed the length of the bristles into the paint, letting them spread and create random patterns. That actually worked better, so I went over much of the ‘pulled’ paint with the ‘pressing’ method after the entire area had been painted.

When I paint grass, I like to apply paint in the direction the grass grows. But it is not natural for me to stroke upward with a brush, so I turned the painting upside down for this part of the process.

Turning the painting upside down also tricks my eye into seeing values rather than the composition. That keeps me from getting too caught up in detail when what I need to be doing is covering the larger area.

This is what the painting looked like at the end of the day and the painting week. In spite of the way it began, I was happy with it. The landscape itself is very pleasing, if a little off balance. The thought even crossed my mind that I should add a few more landscape features and turn this into a landscape painting.

A rolling fence line maybe…?

Maybe not.

The next step is to tame the horses with pencil and paper while this work dries, then transfer them onto the painting and get them finished.

This painting is available for sale. Pre-Completion Purchases receive a 10% discount off full retail price upon payment of order deposit. Payment in full in cash earns a 20% discount off retail.

Interested buyers may also request basic changes to the painting such as changing the color and markings of the horses.

Thank you for reading and, as always, best wishes.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.