How I paint a landscape in oils

How I paint a landscape in oils

 

Have you ever wondered how an artist paints a landscape, and what procedures are involved when working with such a tricky substance as oil paint? I’ve explained the processes I use in the text below.

You might like to check out the blog photo as well as some of the landscape paintings in the 50-item gallery (About-Art) of this website as you read. You can then relate the text to the visual images.

Drakensberg Morning

As a palette, I use titanium white plus 10 other colours. Ranging from yellow to blue, these are lemon yellow, cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, cadmium orange, burnt sienna, cadmium red, alizarin crimson, viridian, cobalt blue and ultramarine blue. I tend to work with larger brushes in the earlier stages, and finish with the finest of them.

Treat turpentine and all oil paints with great care so that you don’t run any health risks. Turpentine fumes are particularly threatening to health if you are careless and work in a tightly enclosed space. Read more on the subject.

Procedure

1.    If there are many large, clearly defined expanses in the imagined work, with evident distinct objects, then I tend to use traditional realism with a hint of impressionism here and there.

 

2.    I use some field sketching where possible and usually also photographic resources for completion at home.

 

3.    A loose but accurate block-in is done with big brushes and thin turpentine, on a prior ground of burnt sienna or yellow ochre. South African scenes usually benefit from a warm, undercurrent glow showing through.

 

4.    Then burnt sienna (red base), cobalt/viridian (blue base) and yellow ochre (yellow base) are used for blocking in the main masses. Their mixtures give every colour I need as a further foundation; albeit slightly dulled and low in intensity and hue. I generally build up from dark shadows to lighter areas, and thin to thicker paint. Brighter more intense and saturated colours follow later, often close to the focal point(s) to achieve prominence.

 

5.    I usually do the sky first and then move forward-down, but return as necessary to soften edges and rearrange composition and colour schemes. Trees against the sky are generally painted wet into wet to avoid the effect of harsh cut-outs. As verticals they are usually quite dark in tone because much sky-light  is shut out by the foliage. The depth of tone in their shadows depends on distance and other factors.

 

6.    The sky might have some yellow ochre and titanium white for lights, with cloud bases of cobalt/ultramarine or a tinge of alizarin. The warm grey horizon is fuzzed to allow recession and avoid a sharp cut-out effect, but I sometimes use the knife in cloud lights.

 

7.    Distant mountains and hills require varied mixtures of titanium white, cobalt and a tinge of alizarin painted in a mid-tone because of their slant, while closer terrain needs a bit more ultramarine, alizarin and burnt sienna with titanium white to lighten it and provide form. Some knife painting might be done.

 

8.    For far trees I might use cobalt, yellow ochre, burnt sienna and titanium white to make a green-grey. Leaves are a warm but dulled brown-green-grey with trunks showing darkly as spreading verticals. A few significant sky-holes give them shape.

 

9.    Near trees are more ragged and ill-disciplined, implying the use of viridian, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. The darkest tones are usually placed here and the oranges yellows and reds are brighter in hue. Lighter mixtures of yellow ochre and white with a little viridian and burnt sienna that form sunlit leaf-clusters are built up over a medium green/brown base colour to depict shadows.

 

10. Branches and sky holes define the foliage with ragged edges that avoid a cut-out impression. Any background light tends to consume and subdue a tendency to sharpness at the edges.  Most shadows do well with a little blue added.

 

11. Shrubs usually have a very ‘tatty’ aerial outline, and there are often many dark/light stems, with some sky holes penetrating right through to the background.

 

12. On a sunny day the foreground can contain viridian, cadmium yellow, yellow ochre, cadmium red and burnt sienna. Lead-in pathways can help the viewer enter the painting, threading through low vegetation of viridian and burnt sienna growth.

 

13. Some dark foreground shadows may be burnt sienna darkened by viridian or ultramarine in the mix. Glazing can help. Most grass grows vertically, but one can wipe down to the yellow under-paint to get a balance of contrasting horizontal planes. A palette knife might also be used, especially if rocks or stones protrude.

Basics of a more impressionist approach.

1.    If nature is very wild and jumbled, a more impressionist approach can be used. Choose broken colour for the background; with no ‘wristy’ smoothing and pasting! No tight sharp-edged photographic approach is desirable.

 

2.    Identify and simplify the big jumbles of foliage. Paint abstract leaf-clusters in broken colour. Let one or two precise trunks/ branches define it all later. Perhaps block-in first with a wash of viridian and cadmium yellow.

 

3.    The upper 2/3 and background can be blocked in with broken colour including ultramarine, cobalt, viridian, yellow ochre, some violet and a leavening of white. Make some quite extensive, ragged but distinct patches. Later refine it with a second precisely defined layer of broken colour. Are a few blue-green sky patches peeping through? Work with big brushes and a ‘wristy’ stroke.

 

4.    Add the bottom 1/3 in broken colour that might include burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium red and Indian yellow.

 

5.    Paint trunks and branches decisively to contrast and define the chaos of foliage. There might be suitable, three-dimensional darks and lights in trunks, and some sharply defined branches to contrast with those that are lost. Knife-painting is possible.

 

6.    In the foreground, perhaps wipe away some horizontals swipes of wet paint with a cloth to expose the base colour, and add tiny touched of cadmium red, cadmium yellow, orange with some meretricious hooks of cadmium lemon; also maybe add a warm, quite dark lower rim of indistinct terrain for the viewers eyes to cross into the picture. Also perhaps insert a pathway that viewers can pick up and follow as an entry point.

 

7.    Use a knife to produce clean sky and cloud, also for the sharpness of rocks, trunks and foreground.

 

Also look at the 50 paintings in Alex-Art if you have time, and read the text. It’ll give you an idea how each was painted. I hope your own paintings exceed what you see in mine, and that you excel as no other artist before you. If you start early enough, who knows what might be possible?