Last year I painted this view of the Remarkables mountains in Queenstown, New Zealand and I thought I'd share with you the painting process of how I created this art work.
The Remarkables, 400mm x 500mm, oil on canvas.
The composition was inspired by the works of the 19th / 20th century landscape artist Edgar Payne. Below is one of the reference photos I used to create the composition.
I started of my canvas with a layer of burnt sienna which I had preprepared. This gives vibrancy and warmth to the painting as well as an overall traditional feel. I sketched out the scene with burnt umber.
I always start by painting the sky first so I can gauge the overall tonality of the painting, then I block in the mountains. I am conscious to keep my colours and tones subdued in the mountains so the recede in the painting, if I use colour that is too saturated it will come too far forward and the illusion of depth will be lost. I increase the saturation and tonal values in the mid-ground mountain and lake to bring it forward.
As I finish blocking in the painting I paint the fir trees on the left side and paint the grass in the foreground. I use my darkest tones and most saturate colour for the foreground as the tonal scale between light and dark increases.
This is the stage where I spend time modelling the paint and building up the detail of the painting overall. Often I have to repaint areas and make overall adjustments to the tonality of the painting.
In this later stage of the painting I am working in the fine detail and adding in the highlights in the trees, mountains and water. At this stage the painting is really starting to take form, however I will still save my lightest tones until the end.
In this stage I add the suggestions of blades of grass and the leaves on the trees as well as refining the painting as a whole. This painting overall took many weeks to paint.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and if you like what I do, any tips to help support my art career would be greatly appreciated.
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I have more painting demos on my website: samuelearp.com