Martin's vineyard on Sonoma Mountain Road here in Glen Ellen is fairly high up on the mountain, but there's still a bit to look up to from there. The Autumn colors in this backlit afternoon view combine with the cool shadows to give this painting it's full spectrum look. I'm getting looser with my application of pigments as the years roll by...I don't really want a photographic realism. Just a strong suggestion of the subject that occurs when I use the intense color of my memory combined with the reference that the camera gives me. Each new color that I introduce helps create that illusive suggestion.
The Van der Kamp vineyard view of Sonoma Mountain is back on the easle and I made some good progress on it yesterday. I decided to extend the nearer tree group to achieve a better compositional balance. I'm working lighter and brighter colors over the darker and cooler tones of shadow that I established earlier on in the painting process.
Bringing the illusion of Sunlight into a painting is simply a matter of keeping the reflective color in the shadows very cool and the lighted areas warm and bright.
I thought that I had better subdue the yellow a bit so I added some strokes of a redder hue to suggest vineyard in the forward area. Autumn colors in the local vineyards are really something to behold.
Softening the shadow colors with liighter shades of cools puts more detail into your imagination, but tends to push it all back away from the yellow underpainting that still dominates the lower third of the canvas...Really bringing that into the area just in front of the viewer. The darker shadow section on the left was roughed in with a mixture of Alizerine Crimson & Ultramarine Blue and it too stays well forward visually, of the other lighter and cooler hues.
A good friend of mine was looking at a finished painting of mine that had taken me many hours to complete, and asked me,"How did you do that?" I took a brief moment to contemplate what he was really wanting to know and realized that it was beyond his experience and couldn't quite be explained in a single sentence or even a paragraph...And then I was inspired to sum it up with the phrase; " One stroke at a time."...Which is why many painters of landscapes shy away from larger size supports and are content to work on small or medium size canvases. I think ...Larger canvas...Larger brushes...More pigment...More fun! Takes longer....More process to enjoy!
Aloha Ohana,
Timo
Continuing to work the upper portions of the compsition with the gradually distancing cool colors of shadow seen through thicker and thicker atmosphere as it recedes further away.
Continuing to paint a somewhat cooler shadow color across the treeline from left to right...Still working with a large (#12) longhandled Flat Hogbristle brush. The scene is backlit by the late afternoon Sunlight...So the colors are dramatic in the contrasts between the bright warms and the cooler darks.
I'm using a fairly large (#14) long handled natural hog bristle flat brush. to work the pigment/medium onto the canvas...A lot of different sorts of movements and stroke directions to keep it interesting and the results feeling natural. Still underpainting a bit but starting to layer some shadow colors over my bright underpainting.
Laying in my bright yellows over the stark white gessoed surface of the canvas really helps keep them as vibrant as they need to be in the final aspect of the painting. Even though there won't be nearly that much showing by then.
I started a new painting night before last on a commercially built 30" x 40" canvas that was part of a group of supports traded to me for a resoration job that I'm doing for a friend.
This is the result of the first session of underpainting. What follows will be modified by these first colors that go on the canvas.
