Sunday, August 21, 2011

Picture 3 finished!

After a gap, I was finally able to get back to some serious painting and finish the 3rd of my pictures for Fiona's art course. Before I go to the final product, let me share the process. I did a monotone of the picture first, which is lower down in this blog. It was more for me to understand the lessons I had been given in understanding value.
For this picture I decided to do a slightly larger one than my earlier one. It measures 14" X 11" and is painted on Renaissance 200 gsm rough. I started by a drawing of the picture. I didnt put in too many details, just got the main lines.  I had never stretched water colour paper before, so under Ona's guidance, wet and stretched the paper and let it become dry.
Once this was done I chose my palette of colours which were ultramarine blue, paynes grey, light red, burnt umber and burnt and raw sienna. I had decided to make the cottage in the center my primary COI and the snows at the back the second one. Ona said that COI's depended on what you wanted your painting to say She said 'It is always good to have a thought that you want to convey in any painting. Its what brings it to life. yes, you need the technical skills but paintings that really catch the eye are more than this. So what does this photo say to you? or what do you want your painting to say to others? ' I agreed that I wanted to convey the harshness of life in these altitudes.
I started painting from the background to the foreground, so the pictures developed  like this


 We found that the red stone in the painting (although it was there in the photograph) actually took away from my COI, so I removed it the best i could and matched it to the other colours of the wall. Another valuable lesson learnt that one didn't have to copy everything from one's reference picture but interpret it to say what one wants! So the next one looked like this
To finish it I put a few blue washes on the mountain at the back so that it receded and added a little more detail to the walls and the cottage. Ona also suggested I lighten the ridges on the extreme right and this really made a difference!
This is the final product and I am DELIGHTED with it

3 comments:

  1. The harshness of life in those mountains is definitely what this painting says to me. Payne's gray is such a wonderful color isn't it?

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  2. Hi Brinda. I think your wc painting is most effective and clearly shows the isolation as well.

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  3. Thanks for looking and commenting!

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