Birch Lane

Its a little more like spring in the traditional sense, soft rain and luscious growth.

I decided to soften the painting style for this subject. There are parts that have a ‘watercolour’ look, in the sky and the trees on the right. I remember producing a sky like this in watercolour by soaking the paper and building up the paint by dropping the paint onto the wet paper and letting it spread. Although this sky looks like this form of a watercolour sky, the method in oils is quite different and requiring a lot more work. The rest of the soft areas also need brushing and blending to produce an effect which is so simple in watercolours.

In the final stages the paint was flowing like ink with so much solvent used. This is how I get those really sharp fine lines. In the thicker lines the wet under paint is often lifted producing a channel into which I can drop the ‘inky’ paint. As in watercolour there are accidental and random effects when the paint starts to flow, sometimes mixing with and other times completely filling the channel with a thin transparent layer of paint.

The colours used were Cadmium Yellow, Raw Umber and Cobalt Blue plus black and white. I used no medium but plenty of solvent.

Here is the video of the painting process, see you soon.