Wayside

This painting borrowed much from the watercolour technique, where large areas are covered by washes and the details are painted on top, sometimes on the partially dry layer but also on the very wet under colour. As mentioned in the previous post, oil colours are not designed for this treatment so its restrictive.

However, having explored this treatment of oil paint does add an extra range of effects which can be applied in certain paintings or maybe areas of a painting, painted using traditional oil painting techniques. Shadow areas in oil paintings are usually ‘blocked in’ in large flat areas. Details are added into these areas as the painting progresses using mid tones and later highlights (opaque colour with white added)).

In contrast, this treatment uses the shadow colours as final layers allowing the colour of the white canvas to show through transparent ‘washes’ to create form in these shadows.

In my next painting (just completed), I used this ‘watercolour’ method in a shadow area, finishing in a traditional oil painting way and its looks just great –  if you don’t mind me saying so myself. But that’s for the next post, in the meantime here’s the video of the painting of this picture.